Living Well with Hypothyroidism: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...what You Need to Know [Paperback]

The book is the only patient-written, patient-oriented book that tells the real story of hypothyroidism -- the risks, the real symptoms, how to get diagnosed, finding proper treatment, and going on to enjoy good health that lasts a lifetime. The book is a manual of living well for anyone who is hypothyroid, whether due to autoimmune condition like Hashimoto's Disease, radioactive iodine, surgery, or antithyroid drug treatments for Graves' Disease and hyperthyroidism, or surgery for nodules or thyroid cancer.

A detailed "Hypothyroidism Risks and Symptoms Checklist" you can fill out and take to the doctor helps you determine if you are hypothyroid. And the book includes a huge appendix filled with contact information on thyroid-related organizations in the UK, USA, Europe, and around the world, patient support groups, websites, health and wellness magazines, thyroid-related books, thyroid and health-related websites, and physicians and health practitioners who can make a difference in your health.

This book is for you if:

* You strongly suspect you have thyroid disease but are having difficulty getting a diagnosis by conventional means.

*You aren't sure if your various symptoms point to hypothyroidism, but you're trying to find out more.

* You've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, told to take this pill and come back in a year, and want more information about how to live as well as possible with your hypothyroidism.

* You are receiving what your doctor feels is sufficient treatment for your hypothyroidism and you still don't feel well.

* You're an open-minded health practitioner who wants to discover what other innovative practitioners are doing to help patients, and get a better understanding of the patient's perspective on this common but often overlooked disease.

Above all, this book is for you if you want to learn about living well with hypothyroidism, from the perspective of empowered patients and caring practitioners. Living Well with Hypothyroidism is different. This is your book, written by a thyroid patient, for other patients . . . people like the author, Mary Shomon, who are going through the familiar ups and downs of diagnosis and treatment.

Living Well with Hypothyroidism provides the information about hypothyroidism you probably won't find out from your doctor, the pharmaceutical companies, the patient organizations, or in other books about thyroid disease. Mary Shomon talks honestly, and without allegiance to any pharmaceutical companies or medical organizations, about the risks and symptoms of hypothyroidism, how to truly get a diagnosis, and the many treatments -- conventional and alternative -- to treat the condition and its unresolved symptoms. Ultimately, the book is about living well with hypothyroidism, having the knowledge, tools, and team of health practitioners who can ensure that you feel the best you possibly can.

In this book, you'll find out what your doctor won't tell you about risks, diagnosis, drugs, and alternative and conventional things that work -- and don't work -- to treat hypothyroidism and its symptoms. You'll also hear the voices of patients, real people who have struggled for diagnosis, tried to deal with their doctors, tried different medicines, suffered setbacks, enjoyed successes. Each person quoted in this book was determined to share his or her own story, ideas, humor, sympathy, hope, ideas, and pain with you. You will recognize your own experiences, fears and emotions, and be touched and moved by the incredibly honest and poignant quotes and stories from patients around the world. Above all, you'll know you are not alone.

A year later, after recuperating for the most part but still feeling tired, I started a slow but steady weight gain. I became engaged to my boyfriend in July of 1994, and stopped smoking in September of that year. Then the weight literally poured on.

Disgusted with the weight gain, and feeling increasingly depressed, I started smoking again. No weight lost, none gained, and I was still depressed. At that point, I felt dumpy, overweight, depressed, and then six months later, in July of 1995, I started having trouble getting a full breath. The doctor thought I had developed asthma. At that point, I quit smoking -- that time for good -- and a few more pounds piled on. A month after I quit, the doctor decided to just run some various blood tests, because I was again complaining that I didn't feel well. The doctor called a few days later and said that I had "low thyroid" and she'd called in a prescription for me. I had absolutely no idea what a thyroid was, or even where it was located.

After I was diagnosed, I continued developing all kinds of symptoms that mystified my doctor and me. My periods became heavier and more frequent. My skin started flaking. I had headaches. I had a consultation with an endocrinologist, who acknowledged that some of the symptoms I had probably were my thyroid. She ran an antibodies test -- at my request -- but said it wasn't necessary because it didn't matter why I was hypothyroid . . . I just was. The test revealed the antibodies that signal Hashimoto's disease. I asked what that meant, and the endocrinologist said it didn't change the treatment, so I didn't have to worry about it.

The endocrinologist said it was just coincidence that I was a size 8 who could eat anything I wanted before my thyroid went bad, and that less than a year later, I was a size 12. She suggested that the other symptoms would probably calm down more like ten to sixteen weeks later. The way she put it was:

". . . In four months or so, you'll look back and realize how much better you feel than you do now. It's going to be relative, and so gradual that it won't be dramatic. One day down the road, you'll just realize you feel better than you did now."

So I waited my four months. And I still didn't feel quite well. Far better than before, yes, but still not right. So I read, and I read. And then I got a computer, and I surfed the web. I started to disseminate whatever information I found via the online Usenet newsgroup, alt.support.thyroid, and talk with other thyroid patients. And I found out that things like hair falling out, and weird periods, and difficulty losing weight, and carpal tunnel syndrome, and feeling depressed were all utterly "normal" symptoms of hypothyroidism. Maybe some of the information wasn't what I wanted to hear, but I needed to hear it!

It was a true revelation. Knowing what was and wasn't related to my thyroid was far better than not knowing. There were times I felt so sick that I secretly worried I had some incurable horrible disease that the doctors were overlooking. Realizing that symptoms were related to the thyroid also gave me something to shoot for -- fixing my thyroid -- instead of running around taking pill after pill or visiting high-priced specialists for every supposedly new, but actually thyroid-related, symptom that appeared.

Later, I assembled a lot of my information and created a thyroid disease website. At the site, I've written dozens of articles on thyroid disease, maintain an active bulletin board, and provide links to hundreds of sources of conventional and alternative thyroid information on the web. Back in July of 1997, I also started a separate newsletter, called Sticking Out Our Necks, offering the latest thyroid-related news on health, drugs, treatments, tests, companies, and alternative therapies for hypothyroidism and its symptoms. I've also recently expanded the newsletter to a printed version by regular mail. And along the way, despite my hypothyroidism, I even managed my most important project of all -- giving birth to my wonderful daughter, Julia, in late 1997!

Every day for the past five years I've studied as much as I can about thyroid disease and hypothyroidism, searched for information on conventional and alternative ways to diagnose and treat hypothyroidism, and turned around and put that information out via my web page and my news report. As part of my educational mission, I've answered many thousands of emails from people with hypothyroidism around the world. Over and over again, people write, pouring out their hearts, sharing the same concerns, the same problems.

When you receive dozens of emails every single day for years, it's obvious something is wrong, and someone needs to do something about it. That's why I wrote this book.