When things went wrong: part one

Graves Disease snuck up on me towards the end of 2011. I had no idea I was even unwell. I was six months pregnant with my second child and my body was going through a lot of changes. Nearly all of my symptoms could’ve been attributed to pregnancy. Feeling tired, hot all the time, disturbed sleep and faster heart rate (I thought all of these were normal). I didn’t even think about about seeing the doctor about any of these things. However, one day while visiting my mum, she tool a good look at me and said “one of your eyes is bigger than the other.” I immediately dashed to a mirror, and saw that she was right. How had I not noticed that? And more importantly, how had my husband not noticed?! He sees me everyday! Anyways, I put it down to a possible eye infection developing and said I’d keep an eye (!) on it over the next couple of days. But my eye didn’t normalise, and in fact, I noticed that both of my eyes were noticeably bigger than they were just a year ago. So after going to get a blood test, I was finally diagnosed with Graves disease.

When I first heard the term Graves disease I thought it sounded just awful (I was so glad to hear it was named after Robert Graves, who discovered the condition). I was nervous about this diagnosis. I was really worried I was going to transfer this on to my unborn child. And hearing how it could affect my heart, metabolism, skin and (already) my eyes, I was eager to manage it exactly how the doctors wanted me to. I did a lot of reading about what Graves disease was and how it was treated, but I didn’t find much about people’s personal accounts with hyperthyroidism. It seemed people only spoke about hypothyroidism. 

As the pregnancy progressed, I was closely monitored with regular blood tests, blood pressure checks and careful monitoring my medications of propylthioracil. At this point I was also suffering from pelvic pain.

I had hoped that once my baby was born that my thyroid would normalise and, eventually, I could come off my medications completely. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and it was only the start of my health deteriorating.