For the past few months I've suffered from extreme tiredness and I finally decided to do something about it early last week and book to see the doctor. Originally I was told that I'd have to wait 3 weeks, and had an appointment booked for early Feb. Then a couple of days later I noticed that I'd lost a big patch of eyelashes from my right eyelid. This freaked me out a bit so I started looking on the internet to try and figure out what might have caused it. I came across the Thyroid UK list of symptoms and realised that I actually have a lot of the symptoms of hypothyroidism, things that I just tried to ignore as a quirk of my body mostly. Full symptom list is:
- Extreme tiredness, unrestful sleep despite 8+ hours undisrupted most nights, falling asleep uncontrollably in the evenings and feeling like I need to sleep in the middle of the day.
- Complete lack of energy/motivation. Inability to drum up excitement about pretty much anything.
- Brain fog, memory issues, inability to concentrate propery.
- Almost permanently cold hands and feet
- Weight gain
- Hair loss (eyelashes and have been losing more head hair than normal)
- Dry skin, peely and itchy after I shower
- Ridges on my fingernails
- Loss of libido
- Mood swings, irritability
- Joint pain, particularly hips, back and knees
Might have forgotten some?
I called the doctors again and mentioned that I thought I'd need a blood test and magically there was a cancellation that day (Friday). The doctor wasn't particularly nice to me, I took a list of my symptoms because I wouldn't have been able to remember them off the top of my head, but he barely looked at them - I don't think he was happy that I'd been researching on the internet. He just said I'd need to have a full blood panel and come back for the results. On the form I was given it says, Investigations required: ESR, FBC, Glucose fasting - GPs only, HBA1c, U&E, Liver profile, Bone profile, Thyroid Function.
Hoping that something shows up on the tests as it would be amazing to think that one day in the future all the above could be improved and I could be back to being the old me again!