Mondays are the days I am suppose to talk about tracking our thoughts, words and deeds when it comes to our thyroid health.
My son was home from school today on holiday and it completely threw me off my game, and now, he’s asleep in his room and my Fitbit base tracker is in his bedroom.
This will be my excuse for not talking stats today and I’m sticking with it.
Besides, I am sure that my stats will reveal that I’ve neglected myself this week.
I can tell even without plugging in my tracker. I can feel it in the worries and stresses bubbling up just under the surface and I know it’s really my body asking me to quit ignoring it.
So let’s talk about something else shall we?
Sometimes I check in on the Hashimotos group I belong to on Facebook. I am not a big Facebook user, but this is one of those groups that I do glance at from time to time and try and offer hope and encouragement to those recently diagnosed, who are worrying about what to expect — and post their questions for the group to answer.
I often want to shoot (it’s a redhead expression) the occasional group member who goes straight to telling them about thyroid cancer. It reminds me of the people who told you all the worse-case birth scenarios before the delivery of your first child.
I want to snap, “Stop it already. Quit scaring her!”
But then I realize that for them to speak from a place of having survived that prognosis, they have the honorable right to express their fear and post-traumatic-stress thoughts on to a newly-diagnosed member because they remember what life was like before their thyroid decided to test their will.
Amen to you sisters.
But I want to be different.
I want to offer a beacon of hope. I want my thyroid sisters to believe that they can be well, maybe not cured, but well and enjoy a full, rich life.
I find great hope in laughter. I know there is humor to be mined here in our thyroid worlds. Laughter calms our spirits and reminds us how sweet life can be.
Each of us that rolled out of bed this morning were given another chance at life. It’s a beautiful gift and often times we get so bogged down in our daily routines that we forget to look at the trees, feel the wind, or smile back at the strange child who is staring at our puffy, red faces. Maybe some of us look like Mrs. Claus and they hope by smiling at us Santa will remember them this year.
Today is a gift people.
You have today to tell someone you love them, to share bread with someone who is running out of food, to hug a suffering teenage girl who has just lost a parent to death, and contact people that you’ve been missing. Today is a great day to laugh.
It’s good to be here.
Come on, at least we thyroid sisters don’t have some hot pink ribbon on every label seen EVERYWHERE to remind us that we might be a “cause.” If we did have such a symbol I think it should be something warm — like wool thread.
Many of us do wear warm sweaters and wool pants in 80 degree weather.
Other days I think our symbol should be a hanging a pot of coffee with a straw swung over one shoulder resembling something along the lines of a coffee/purse Bota bag that we suck on all day.
Don’t get me wrong. I want to raise awareness about thyroid disease, but I don’t want a cause with a colored ribbon. I want to laugh.
I want to give hope sprinkled in humor.
The kind of hope Liza Donnelly: Drawing on Humor for Change TED talk offers –
I’ll post my stats under here tomorrow.
Catherine
