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It’s been over a month since I’ve posted. And for the readers who haven’t abandoned me, I would like to explain why.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but I have a chronic disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. This is basically an autoimmune disorder where my body actually attacks and destroys my thyroid gland.

So, my thyroid gland is incapable of producing the amount of thyroid hormones I need to function. In medical terms, I’m hypothyroid.

I was diagnosed with this about four years ago, although I suspect it’s been going on for five or more years.

Untreated, thyroiditis would probably kill me. Of course, before I succumbed, I would get grossly fat, and be incredibly grumpy.

To compensate for my puny thyroid gland, I take synthetic thyroid hormones.

Diagnosing thyroid disorders is problematic, at best.

Figuring out that you are hypothyroid (or hyperthyroid) is not necessarily that easy.

From the time my thyroid problem was suspected to the time I was taking the correct amount of medication so that I could function without, for instance, falling asleep while driving to and from work, took about a year.

That year was hell.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t have cancer, or heart disease, or multiple sclerosis, or even diabetes.

Those are real diseases, especially the first three.

What I have is somewhat less threatening and life destroying.

I watched my mother die of cancer and my father die of heart disease. Other than having had these diseases myself, I am intimately familiar with them.

Of course, I would never pretend to have the depth of familiarity with debilitating disease of a cancer survivor. So, if you’re reading this and you are a cancer survivor, please understand I’m not comparing myself to you.

Having said that, I would not characterize thyroiditis as life-threatening (although untreated, I certainly can be), but as life-altering.

I am 80% of the person I used to be, even on the best of days.

This past month has not been the “best of days”!

You know there’s an old saying: put a frog in boiling water and he jumps out. Put him in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, he cooks!

I was that frog, and although I didn’t know it, I was starting to cook.

Now that I look back at it, sometime around February, I started to loose some of my stamina. By May, I was coming home from work and taking a nap every day.

I teach high school–not necessarily the least stressful of jobs.

This year has been especially stressful at my school.

I thought I was tired just because it was the end of the school year.

That was not the case.

I thought once I was out for the summer, I could catch up with my rest. What happened is I was taking two and three naps a day, plus sleeping at night.

Finally, my wife (who is infinitely smarter than I am) told me to go to the doctor.

I made an appointment with my endocrinologist, did some blood work, and lo! Turns out my thyroid gland had deteriorated further, causing me to become increasingly tired.

That was about a week and a half ago. They changed the dosage of the medications I take, and I already feel better.

Now, I’m down to one nap a day. That’s “normal” for me. Like I said, I’m 80% of who I used to be.

It was all I could do that last month of school to go to work and come home. Unfortunately, many things I love to do like blogging and exercising went by the board.

Well, I’m back!

As usual, everything that happens to us is perfect.

I actually needed and enjoyed my break from blogging.

I was getting way to caught up in how many unique visitors I had, should I monetize, what the hell is this blog all about in the first place.

Having been away, I realize I like having readers and I want to encourage more people to read me, but I’m not going to get hung up on the statistics.

I’ll monetize when I feel like it.

And, I still don’t know. Although, I have a much better idea.

One idea I had was writing shorter blog posts. Looks like that’s not going to happen.

Well, in the spirit of just enjoying communicating with the world without worrying about the details, let me just say this:

I’m dropping my posting frequency to probably once a week.

I’ve got a lot more to say about the direction this blog should take, but I’ll leave that for Silence Lifted, Part II.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.