Sorry I haven't been posting anything. I've been really busy with school and health and so on and so forth, so I wanted to update everyone on what's going on with my thyroid/tiredness problem and what's happening there. I actually do have TONS of photos to edit and post up, so it's not that I'm not taking pictures, I just haven't had the time to sift through them and edit them and get them up here, but I'm going to try and do a couple a day until the semester is over with then I'll have a week of doing a whole lot of nothing so I'll kick it into superdrive and get a bunch up and hopefully get almost all of them up by then. Anywho. On to the health stuff...

So yesterday I went to Tulsa to see an endocrinologist. So... backstory.

Last semester, I started having sleeping problems. Mainly, I've just been tired all the time no matter how much sleep I tried getting. So in December, I went to the doctor see what she had to say since I had tried many different things including sleeping pills, not drinking caffeine past 3 pm, not eating anything sugary close to bedtime, not taking naps past 5 pm, and maintaining a consistent sleep schedule. So basically my doctor listened and checked me out and such. And while she was feeling around on my neck for any abnormalities, she felt some lumps on my neck in my thyroid area, so she scheduled me to get some blood work done, an ultrasound of my thyroid, and gave me some different sleep medicine to try. The sleep medicine made me loopy and gave me odd dreams but I didn't feel any more or less rested. The blood work came back mainly normal except that my TSH level was a very low-normal. The ultrasound showed that I had one large nodule on the left side of my thyroid and two sub-centimeter sized nodules on the right side of my thyroid. So then I was sent to a surgeon.

Basically, the surgeon set me up for a nuclear scan to see what the nodules were doing since he doesn't want to biopsy them or even just cut them out now since I'm so young. So right before spring semester started, I went and got this nuclear scan done. And just as a side note, never again do I want to go through that. First, ingested a pill so big that even elephants would be wary to take it. So I was 'technically' radioactive after that point. The next morning I went and sat under a machince for... forever. I'm claustrophobic and the machine was like an inch from my face. I wanted to die. Anyways. The results basically said that the nodule on the left side is "hot." This means that it's overactive, but not cancerous. The two little nodules on the right side were found to be "cold." This means that it's underactive and could be cancer. So I was then referred to an endocrinologist. And as a side note, the doctors said that my constant tiredness was not being caused by these nodules.

So yesterday, I went to the endocrinologist. Basically, he said that because I'm so young, we're going to have to watch the nodules closely. We have to watch the one on the left side and get TSH blood tests done every 3 or 4 months to make sure that my TSH levels don't get any lower and I develop hyperthyroidism. The ones on the right we have to watch closely by getting regular ultrasounds done to make sure they aren't growing. If they are, it could mean that I have cancer. As far as my tiredness, the endocrinologist told me to try switching allergy medicines and get more sleep. Well... I've tried getting more and less sleep neither have worked. I'm switching my allergy medicine, so we'll see how that goes. But basically he said that if switching the medicine and getting more sleep don't work, he's going to refer me to a sleep specialist to get a sleep study done because he thinks I have either sleep apnea (more likely) of narcolepsy (possibility, but sleep apnea is more likely). So we'll see where that goes.

But that's basically it. My medical problems. Just keeping everyone updated. So after spring semester is over with, I'm going to get a TSH blood test done and another ultrasound done to see how things are going. Anywho. That's all for now. I hope everyone has a good day.
Love you all!

and
Angela