Thanks to Helvella for this link from today's Guardian: theguardian.com/society/201...
Just to add to my previous post-PIP prattle, here's what has happened to me thus far as a result of the stress of the PIP assessment with the ATOS lady, who was as nice and comfortable to deal with as a Pitbull cross that was quite still but had its hackles raised and its eyes fixed askance, somewhere just in front of you, so that you knew you were in its peripheral vision and being watched.
Immediately after the interview I crashed. By this I mean my limbs felt like they had the strength of over-boiled spaghetti with joints filled with ground glass and muscles and tendons that had just been chargrilled. The pain across my neck and shoulders, from its having settled prior to the PIP assessment into dull and exhausting, had been exacerbated to excruciating. The nausea, sporadic at most times, became a constant companion along with its little friend postural hypotension.
The neck and shoulder pain has not only NOT abated but has worsened two months down the line, sending lightening shocks down my arms and into my wrist to settle like a track of still-hot lava – for hours. And hours. And hours. I wait until the nausea and exhaustion from the pain are too much before I take the Ibuprofen, scared that if I take it too often it will not work anymore. Especially worrying since any of the codeine-based crap just heightens – guess what? YES! The nausea! Which I have to say for the last month has thankfully receded to around 3 - 4 times a day, either before, during or after eating, or any other time it feels like it. You’d think that the silver lining would be weight loss, but no. Still have a full-sized, three-tiered-cake-top. And postural hypotension seems to have decided to stay awhile. Must like me.
Actually, the pain has been slowly extending its range into previously unfelt – and unknown – places. Like the bit where your inner thigh joins ... the rest of you. And, I mean, what the hell is the stabbing pain right up the proverbial flue all about? I wouldn’t mind if it was because of having had hot, rampant sex, but the only hot and rampant thing around here is my retriever at dinner time! I’ve had these pain-experiences I call ‘stabbers’ in odd places for a long time. Now they've become quite inventive; I've had them in my big toe, often simultaneous with one in my groin; my ear lobe, my hip, my guts, my bum – if I were superstitious I’d think there was someone out there with a doll that looks like me and a set of hatpins. Come to think of it …
I am weak, fatigued, tachycardic, and angry. Boy, am I angry. Word-finding, apart from b*****d, %&*+~#, ***t and ~#@’!!!, has become an adventure in wandering loosely around the meaning as though in a linguistic maze, trying to either happen-upon, stumble over or just s**d**g remember the B****Y WORDS, FOR GOD’S SAKE!
And, since that fecking – can I say fecking, admin? – assessment, my hair has thinned to such an extent that the haircut I paid a ridiculous sum for six weeks ago, because my hair had seemed to evolve into one of those twig confections rammed together by squirrels in the birch tree at the bottom of the garden, now looks freeze-dried; it reminds me of an old lady’s, her having emerged from the local salon in the hairdresser's parlor, with a hair-do like a translucent hat of fuzz glued into place by lacquer, haloing a pink, heat-tortured scalp. It is NOT a good look. Especially without eyebrows. Thank god the other patch of thinning hair cannot be seen publicly. Or privately, for that matter – remember the wedding-cake-top?
And nails? Nails?
So, Helvella, thanks for the link. And just to add that it was quite timely for me - I am seeing an ME/CFS guy who is a ‘Consultant in Rehabilitative Medicine’ and is a specialist in MS and CFS. And who has written papers showing similarities (what’s the proper word?) between MS and CFS – and is very much aware of the thyroid links. Only seen him once so far – I’m hoping for a longish and fruitful working relationship with the man, since the one with Madam Pouter Pigeon, Autocrat (i.e. endo) has deteriorated into my being a little cash cow who needs to know her place and NOT ARGUE (she actually thinks I’m going to go back to Levo …). But I won't hold my breath. Just yet. But, if this man is an MS specialist - and he understands the thyroid links ....
Going to lie down now.
Does anyone have painfull feet , as if wearing a pair of shoes 2 sizes too small?
ME/CFS is not hypothyroidism but can cause it
Thyroid is the missing factor in fibromyalgia 
Me/cfs/fm/underactive thyroid
