Stress , The Silent Killer

Silently, slowly and secondhand — a deadly disease

If you’ve read some of my work, you may have read my piece on my marriage in 2003, that disastrous event that ended seven weeks later. If you haven’t read this piece, here is the link.

Now that you have caught up, I hope it brings to light the stress I was under at the time. The type of severe stress that kills. Silently, slowly and in a secondhand way.

Even with this stress in my life, I still carried on my day-to-day living, not allowing another soul to witness my torment. Work, home, work, home — my new norm.

I was thirty-seven years old and a Financial Controller at an upmarket Tourist Resort at the time and was just finishing up my usual 60-hour working week. It was Friday evening and I was heading home.

We had an event scheduled at the Resort that night and I was planning on attending, however, as 9 pm hit, I realized I was too tired to head on out again and climbed into bed instead.

I was unusually tired and it was not normal for me to climb into bed before midnight, but this Friday night I was struggling to keep my eyes open and it was only 9 pm.

I crashed as soon as my head hit the pillow but my sleep was short-lived. Come midnight and I found myself awake, however, something was seriously wrong as I was battling to breathe. I could only take the shallowest of breaths and I had agonizing pain in my chest, radiating through my upper back and between my shoulder blades.

I knew something was seriously wrong and as I lived in a small town, I tried to contact the emergency doctor that was on call. Over a period of more than seven hours, I left over a dozen messages on the emergency doctor’s call line but never received a reply.

By 8 am the next morning I was still struggling to breathe and I finally managed to get hold of a doctor at my local clinic and they wanted to see me immediately.

They completed numerous tests, sent me for chest X-rays and numerous blood tests over the course of the next three days, to finally discover I was suffering from pneumonia and pleurisy and needed hospitalization immediately.

I was shocked because before all this started I hadn’t had so much as a cold or cough. Just tired enough to go to bed early, only to wake sick with pneumonia and pleurisy.

A further test result came back to also advise that I was unexpectedly pregnant.

Holy shit, alone and pregnant for a third time in my life and to be honest, with the stress I was under and now being terribly ill, this was not good news to my ears. It was news that totally terrified me.

Hospitalizing for the next week gave me more time to think than I needed. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to face these hurdles alone again.

I didn’t believe I could cope with much more, but boy was I wrong!

Home from hospital, trying to pick up the pieces of my life and come to terms with another child coming my way, the weeks passed quickly. However, things were not quite right.

I was exhausted all the time and not the exhaustion of pregnancy. I kept on going, fighting the exhaustion and doing what needed to be done.

But I began to feel more than exhaustion. I was constantly hungry and found I needed to eat every hour or so, but the weight started falling off me. I looked like I was suffering from some sort of palsy, with my hands shaking so badly I could no longer sign my own name. By early evening I was battling to walk as my legs would swell from knee to ankle.

More tests were run and it was discovered my liver was failing. This concerned my doctor greatly, resulting in more extensive testing taking place.

I was finally diagnosed with Graves Disease. A rare disease that about 1% of women in Australia would be diagnosed with.

Graves Disease results from an extremely hyper-active thyroid that was attacking my body, my organs and making me sicker and sicker as the weeks passed. My heart was struggling to keep up, constantly racing with irregular heart palpitations. I was also having trouble with my eyesight, at times battling to see in any great detail. Blood results showed I was borderline diabetic and my cholesterol abnormally high.

All these high blood results were new. I’d never had to worry about high blood sugars or been in a high-risk stroke category. My heart was working so hard, they were convinced I was heading for a heart attack.

My mood was all over the place and extreme. One minute I was in sheer rage and the next I was sobbing my heart out. There were no in-between.

I was consistently hungry and yet the weight continued to fall off of me. Being pregnant I should see the weight increasing but suddenly I was weighing in at 42 kilograms. When I’m not pregnant I usually sat comfortably around 52 kilograms.

I was terribly fatigued and only just managing to get through my workdays. As my disease escalated, I was not able to look after my two young children and had to send them to a friend for six weeks.

Test results continued, specialist appointments were set up and an action plan began to take shape.

Over the next few months, I was heavily medicated to slow my overactive thyroid down, placed on a special diet in an attempt to heal my failing liver and to assist my thyroid. No red meat or dairy for my liver and to steer clear of any food that contained iodine. The diet resulted in very limited food choices and was something I needed to be serious about for a minimum of six months or more.

I also had to make a very difficult decision in regards to my pregnancy. My body just could not take the added stress and I needed to be here for my other two young children. So it was with an extremely heavy heart that I agreed to medically abort my daughter. A decision that ripped my heart from my chest.

Finally through medication and diet, a couple of years of testing and monitoring, we managed to bring my body back to functioning in a new norm. I worked with specialists over these few years in an effort and hope for my Graves Disease to go into remission.

I was told I only had the one chance to see if this would naturally occur and if it didn’t, then the chances of me ever going into remission not only greatly decreased, it wouldn’t happen.

I researched everything I could, I tried different diets in the hope that it would help but sadly remission was not in the cards for me.

Sure my medication was keeping a resemblance of control, but the medication was not ideal. In fact, it was a dangerous medication to be on and they were concerned about me taking it, let alone taking it long term. I was taking nine tablets a day at this stage of my disease.

I fought my specialists for over five years, wanting to exhaust every avenue before I would agree to allow them to destroy my thyroid, but in the end, I had to give in. I had to try to regain my life.

I refused surgery due to the risks involved but did agree to take a dose of radioactive iodine, which eventually, over time, destroyed my thyroid.

Did it cure my Graves Disease? No, it didn’t. I still carry the disease while it periodically flares up and attacks my body, but my Graves Disease is no longer a risk to my life.

Once my thyroid was destroyed, I was immediately treated the same as someone with an underactive thyroid. Lifelong medication, hormone replacement therapy, and quarterly blood work to keep an eye on it.

As an underactive thyroid is not classed as life-threatening, the blood work results can vary significantly and doctors are not overly concerned, regardless of the fatigue and other symptoms that women with an underactive thyroid struggle with constantly.

Eventually, my blood work showed that my underactive symptoms consistently escalated until I was diagnosed with Hashimoto Disease. The exact opposite of Graves Disease.

Meaning I now have two autoimmune diseases, both at the opposite but extreme ends of the thyroid scale.

Sadly, the major lesson I learned from this entire experience, our medical profession today, does not really understand the thyroid gland and how best to treat it when it malfunctions.

As to the initial cause of my original Graves Disease diagnosis, every medical professional I have spoken to has advised that although they are not 100% certain on what causes Graves Disease, they have discovered that both high stress and/or some form of major infection are usually present at the onset of this illness.

Was it solely the stress I was under at the time or did pneumonia and pleurisy contribute? Pneumonia and pleurisy are a mystery as I never had a cough or cold, either before, during, or after and I believe it was the stress that caused both this infection and this illness.

Stress, the silent, secondhand killer that slowly destroys our lives!

Thanks for reading!

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