In 2007 I was diagnosed with Graves Disease.  It sounds like a death sentence, but it’s not.  It is named after the Irish doctor who discovered it, Robert Graves.  It’s an autoimmune disease in which your body attacks the thyroid gland causing it to produce too much thyroid hormone, thus sending your body into a crazy state.  It affects practically every body system.  My heart would race so fast that I would hear it in my head at all times, even when I slept.  My metabolism was off the charts (to some women that may sound awesome) to the point that I would lose three pounds overnight.  All the joints in my body ached, especially my right shoulder and left elbow.  My hands would tremble so much that one time eating in the teachers’ lounge my fruit cocktail flew off my spoon onto the table, talk about embarrassing.  I also had strange things happen to my body.  My hair fell out, I would sweat constantly, and believe it or not, my big toenails fell off!   I was also a nervous wreck all the time.  Imagine your biggest fear or phobia.  You know the feeling when you’re in the midst of it?  It’s utter panic.  You would do anything to get out of the situation.  That’s how I felt most times.  It was downright exhausting.  My mind would not stop worrying and jumping from one thought to another.  My biggest worry and obsession was my eyes.

Grave Disease can attack the muscles behind the eyes.  If you Google Graves Disease the images you will see are frightening.  In fact, when I was dating my husband I made him promise he would never Google it.  It’s pictures of people with bulging, crazy, scary eyes.  At the time of my diagnosis my right eyes was bothering me and both eyes ached when I moved them.  I was so scared that my eyes were going to get worse and one day I would look like those images I saw on the computer.  I would spend a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror, checking to see if my eyes were changing.

Once diagnosed there are a few treatment options and one is to kill the thyroid with radiation, causing under active thyroid.  Lots of people have an under active thyroid and it’s treated by taking a pill of synthetic hormone each day.  The radiation treatment was actually an interesting experience. It is given in pill form at the hospital and once it is administered the patient is supposed to stay away from all other people for twenty-four hours, so radiation is not passed to them.  My wonderful family made me twenty-four little notes and gifts to open each hour to keep me company.  And my mom of course, disobeyed and was by my side the whole day.  Once the radiation is given it is a waiting game for the thyroid to die.  Mine did not go down without a fight.  In fact my symptoms got worse and worse.  I would go for blood work every two weeks. The doctor would take one look at the results and say, “This is so strange.”  He would show me a graph on his computer and say, “ This line is a normal person’s thyroid level…and this line is yours.”  The line went straight up into the air and literally off the chart!  Then he would mutter into his little handheld voice recorder, while I was about to have a nervous breakdown right there in the office.  Months went by and I was ready to march in there and tell him to set up the surgery.  I wanted my thyroid out of my body.  It was at that appointment he finally had good news.  My levels were slowly coming down.

One day at school I was walking toward the restroom when suddenly my vision was overtaken by crazy moving rainbows.  All I could think was, “Now what’s wrong with me?!”  I immediately called my doctor and he said, “That’s it!  Your thyroid is officially dead!”  Remember all the symptoms I had when my thyroid was overactive?  The exact opposite symptoms happen with hypothyroidism.  So now I gained 8 pounds in a week, I could fall asleep in a few seconds, sleep 12 hours and still feel tired.  My heart rate was extremely low and I was freezing all the time.  My joints ached more than ever.  Every breath I took hurt my right shoulder (the doctor gave me strong anti inflammatories to help the pain, thankfully).  My nervous condition was better, but I still had problems with my eyes and worried about it quite a bit.  But now there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was time to find my body’s proper dosage for the thyroid hormone.  In a few months my blood work came back perfect and I started on the road to “normal” once again.  My joint pain slowly went away.  I even had good news from my ophthalmologist.  My eye measurements stayed consistent and he wasn’t worried about the eye disease.  After a long battle, Graves Disease lost!

It may sound like I lost too.  I lost sleep, hair, my toenails, and some would argue years off my life from anxiety.  But to tell you the truth, God taught me so much during that time I would say I actually won!  Through it all, I leaned on the Lord.  Not because I’m some super strong Christian.  In fact, I was the exact opposite.  It was because God left me in a place where I had nowhere else to go, but to Him.  I believe God allows trials in our lives because it draws us to Himself.  It is in those trials that we are tested, but I would also say it is when we see how reliable God is.  It’s as if He is saying, “Come closer…I have something to teach you.”  During those difficult days I took comfort in studying 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.  In it Paul talks about a “thorn in his flesh” he pleaded with God to take away.  Paul asked God three times to heal him, but God did not.  I often thought Paul should have kept asking.  If I asked God to heal me once, I asked Him a thousand times.  When I used to read that I would wonder why God didn’t heal Paul?  What if He doesn’t choose to heal me?  But then I realized God’s answer to Paul was far greater than a healing.  He told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  That was the answer!  God’s grace will see us through all trials.  In order for others to see God’s power He uses weak humans.  That way there is no doubt it is God working since Paul, Tenille and Joe Shmoe could not do it on their own.  And isn’t that the ultimate goal of our lives, for God’s glory to be revealed to others?I like what Peter said in 1 Peter 1:7, “These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold, and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.”So in the end Graves Disease was not a chapter in my life I’d like to forget, but a blessing straight from God.  It changed my life for the better.  I now am more thankful for my health than I ever was before.  I know that I can get through difficult days with God by my side.  And most of all I know how faithful God is, and how real His comfort is in times of need. 

I love the song “If Not For The Storms” by Larnelle Harris.  It beautifully sums up the lessons I learned from Graves Disease. 

Click here to listen to the song “If Not For the Storms”.

Originally written June 24, 2011