I have a saying, kind of a family motto: Food is love. There is nothing better than sharing a meal with my family or others that I love, and it's made even better if I, or we, prepare that food especially for the occasion. Even if the occasion is just Sunday morning breakfast.
Today I realized that it's not just love, it's therapy. I got up earlier than I could have and made the big fall breakfast: eggs, bacon, Trader Joe's gluten free pumpkin pancakes... and that chip on my shoulder has shrunk considerably.
My frustration this week involved struggling to do what I need to do when there are other things that I'd much rather do. As an adult, I do what I have to do, but as a human, I get annoyed if I never get to have any fun! (This from the woman who just got back from a weekend trip to New Orleans...) But even if I can't do everything I want to do, I can at least take the time to make a decent breakfast.
Bonus: leftover pancakes make great take-to-school snacks.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Saturday, October 26, 2019
6 days in...
Nearly a week (the aforementioned 6 days) on the impossibly-tiny 112 mcg/day dose of levothyroxine, and the main thing I can say about myself is that apparently everything is pissing me off.
I feel as if I've spent most of this week with a chip on my shoulder, and I don't exactly know why. I'm still struggling mightily with work-life balance, and I'm acutely aware that I rely on everything going smoothly 100% of the time so that I don't get swamped.
Of course, not-so-smooth events occur every week, so I'm swamped every week. I'm really tired of it, and I want to change it, but I don't exactly know how to do that. I'm figuring it out as I go along.
For example, I'm putting all my quizzes into Google Classroom, so I don't have to grade them ever again. But it's a trade off of up-front time vs grading, and sometimes the grading seems less tedious than entering the quizzes, since every single question and answer has to be manually entered... unless there's some magic "upload" button I've been missing all this time.
I think the school year is going well. We're coming up on the close of our first trimester (I know, I know - weird) so I really do have to catch up on entering grades. I'm not really even that behind with the actual grading, just getting them into the gradebooks... it's another tedious and thankless task. For example, there is a way to link assignments in Google Classroom to the gradebook so the grades can be imported automatically, but that costs another not-significant sum to enable, and it's not in our budget this year. So I end up copying grades from one to the other, and due to odd variances of student names, they're not always in the same order, so something that should literally be a button push becomes 10 minutes of tedium. (It's probably not 10. It may only be 2 or 3 minutes, but it's so tedious it feels like at least 10.)
Yesterday by the end of the day I was feeling irrationally happy that it was Friday, and I had two days off. Today, at 9PM, I'm annoyed again. I literally just thought to myself, I didn't get anything done today, when I, in fact: bought groceries for the week, shopped for DD's birthday, finally bought the notions I need to fix a dress I can't wear because it's too short, went to Mass, made a fantastic from-scratch shepherd's pie for dinner and washed all the dishes (of which there were many), and finally applied for the refunds for DD's aborted flights to New Orleans. That's not nothing, in fact it was a rather busy and productive day, I just didn't get any schoolwork done, and so... I didn't get anything done today, and now I fear tomorrow will be a long, horrid slog, priming me for a miserable week ahead.
I do hope not. I like to believe I can choose, but I'm struggling this week to make my choice -- not to be angry all the time -- stick.
Oh yeah: residual upper respiratory crud continues; body aches galore, headaches many days this week. I want to blame all the wheat I ate last weekend but I don't know if that makes sense. Most likely it's my lack of consistent exercise, but I'm also exhausted all the time these days, so the idea of getting up earlier to put in my workout strikes me as absurd. My hands hurt. Also, I don't think I've shaved my legs for a month now and I don't think anyone would be able to tell. Isn't lack of hair growth a hypothyroid thing? I don't want to have furry legs but if I never had to shave them again, I wouldn't be sad about it!
I feel as if I've spent most of this week with a chip on my shoulder, and I don't exactly know why. I'm still struggling mightily with work-life balance, and I'm acutely aware that I rely on everything going smoothly 100% of the time so that I don't get swamped.
Of course, not-so-smooth events occur every week, so I'm swamped every week. I'm really tired of it, and I want to change it, but I don't exactly know how to do that. I'm figuring it out as I go along.
For example, I'm putting all my quizzes into Google Classroom, so I don't have to grade them ever again. But it's a trade off of up-front time vs grading, and sometimes the grading seems less tedious than entering the quizzes, since every single question and answer has to be manually entered... unless there's some magic "upload" button I've been missing all this time.
I think the school year is going well. We're coming up on the close of our first trimester (I know, I know - weird) so I really do have to catch up on entering grades. I'm not really even that behind with the actual grading, just getting them into the gradebooks... it's another tedious and thankless task. For example, there is a way to link assignments in Google Classroom to the gradebook so the grades can be imported automatically, but that costs another not-significant sum to enable, and it's not in our budget this year. So I end up copying grades from one to the other, and due to odd variances of student names, they're not always in the same order, so something that should literally be a button push becomes 10 minutes of tedium. (It's probably not 10. It may only be 2 or 3 minutes, but it's so tedious it feels like at least 10.)
Yesterday by the end of the day I was feeling irrationally happy that it was Friday, and I had two days off. Today, at 9PM, I'm annoyed again. I literally just thought to myself, I didn't get anything done today, when I, in fact: bought groceries for the week, shopped for DD's birthday, finally bought the notions I need to fix a dress I can't wear because it's too short, went to Mass, made a fantastic from-scratch shepherd's pie for dinner and washed all the dishes (of which there were many), and finally applied for the refunds for DD's aborted flights to New Orleans. That's not nothing, in fact it was a rather busy and productive day, I just didn't get any schoolwork done, and so... I didn't get anything done today, and now I fear tomorrow will be a long, horrid slog, priming me for a miserable week ahead.
I do hope not. I like to believe I can choose, but I'm struggling this week to make my choice -- not to be angry all the time -- stick.
Oh yeah: residual upper respiratory crud continues; body aches galore, headaches many days this week. I want to blame all the wheat I ate last weekend but I don't know if that makes sense. Most likely it's my lack of consistent exercise, but I'm also exhausted all the time these days, so the idea of getting up earlier to put in my workout strikes me as absurd. My hands hurt. Also, I don't think I've shaved my legs for a month now and I don't think anyone would be able to tell. Isn't lack of hair growth a hypothyroid thing? I don't want to have furry legs but if I never had to shave them again, I wouldn't be sad about it!
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
meds update
On Friday, my endocrinologist called me when I was hanging out in DFW between flights, and we had a brief conversation about my dosage.
She wants to lower it again.
So now, after 15 years or so on 137 mcg/day, I'm down to 112. Dropping to 125 mcg/day barely budged my TSH, from 0.1 to 0.2, and the doctor has targeted 0.5 for me. I suppose I'm used to the lower dose, more or less, but I did tell her about feeling slow and stupid, and the hives. She was skeptical that any of that had anything to do with the thyroid medication changing, and in that, she is typical of every endocrinologist ever, in direct contradiction to every thyroid patient's experience ever.
But I asked her again why she wanted to reduce my dose so much, and she is worred that I'll have a fatal arrhythmia or a stroke or a heart attack, and since both my parents had heart problems, I am trying to be more agreeable about it.
I wonder when she'll go for my 5 mcg/day of Cytomel? I know my chart notes mention how attached to it I am, and I know in the past when I've given it up, my autoimmune symptoms worsened considerably. At that point, though, I hadn't yet figured out that I have a problem with wheat, so who knows what would happen now?
I don't go for my blood test until the end of November. I'll continue to track how I'm doing here, so I have some data over the course of this grand little experiment. I have noticed I am having fewer palpitations, but that hasn't dropped to zero. Also, my pulsatile tinnitus is back, but that may have something to do with the huge right-side lymph node under my jaw, which is dealing with the remnants of the upper respiratory crud that descended upon last week.
She wants to lower it again.
So now, after 15 years or so on 137 mcg/day, I'm down to 112. Dropping to 125 mcg/day barely budged my TSH, from 0.1 to 0.2, and the doctor has targeted 0.5 for me. I suppose I'm used to the lower dose, more or less, but I did tell her about feeling slow and stupid, and the hives. She was skeptical that any of that had anything to do with the thyroid medication changing, and in that, she is typical of every endocrinologist ever, in direct contradiction to every thyroid patient's experience ever.
But I asked her again why she wanted to reduce my dose so much, and she is worred that I'll have a fatal arrhythmia or a stroke or a heart attack, and since both my parents had heart problems, I am trying to be more agreeable about it.
I wonder when she'll go for my 5 mcg/day of Cytomel? I know my chart notes mention how attached to it I am, and I know in the past when I've given it up, my autoimmune symptoms worsened considerably. At that point, though, I hadn't yet figured out that I have a problem with wheat, so who knows what would happen now?
I don't go for my blood test until the end of November. I'll continue to track how I'm doing here, so I have some data over the course of this grand little experiment. I have noticed I am having fewer palpitations, but that hasn't dropped to zero. Also, my pulsatile tinnitus is back, but that may have something to do with the huge right-side lymph node under my jaw, which is dealing with the remnants of the upper respiratory crud that descended upon last week.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Quick trip
Last week was kind of crazy because we had no school on Monday and then I took Friday off! So I "only" worked three days, and I feel like I haven't worked in ages.
That's because on Friday I took off for a little jaunt to New Orleans to visit my brother and his family. The original plans were blown up both on their side and on mine, since DD was supposed to come with me, but then she came down with the flu: no flying for her!
I had a great time visiting my brother and his family and all their adorable cats. They fed me all kinds of delicious food and drink and it was just nice to have time to hang out and be together. The best thing is that now most of them will be coming to see us at Thanksgiving! I am beyond excited about it. When I texted DH the news he deadpanned, "Great! I'll start cleaning now." (The house is really not that bad! Really!)
Part of the reason I feel like I've been away a long time is because I read a novel loaned to me by my dear mother-in-law, The Lilac Girls, about the "Ravensbruck Rabbits", girls and young women who were the subjects of gruesome medical experiments in the only Nazi concentration camp that was exclusively for women. Most of the women were Polish Catholics, and from Lublin, which is a place I know my mother visited several times. I think I still have cousins there. It was meticulously researched and only slightly over-written in that "first novel, name-dropping" style, but I was thoroughly engrossed nonetheless.
I arrived home after two entirely matter-of-fact flights in the early afternoon. From there it was grocery shopping, mass, and then dinner prep, as usual. And now I have to prepare myself to plunge back into the work world, and I just want to dive back into another book instead!
This is why I shouldn't read unless I have an actual school holiday. I always want to read more, more, more. I am an insatiable reader, I just manage to keep it under control most of the time. Still, it was a lovely weekend and I do feel refreshed.
That's because on Friday I took off for a little jaunt to New Orleans to visit my brother and his family. The original plans were blown up both on their side and on mine, since DD was supposed to come with me, but then she came down with the flu: no flying for her!
I had a great time visiting my brother and his family and all their adorable cats. They fed me all kinds of delicious food and drink and it was just nice to have time to hang out and be together. The best thing is that now most of them will be coming to see us at Thanksgiving! I am beyond excited about it. When I texted DH the news he deadpanned, "Great! I'll start cleaning now." (The house is really not that bad! Really!)
Part of the reason I feel like I've been away a long time is because I read a novel loaned to me by my dear mother-in-law, The Lilac Girls, about the "Ravensbruck Rabbits", girls and young women who were the subjects of gruesome medical experiments in the only Nazi concentration camp that was exclusively for women. Most of the women were Polish Catholics, and from Lublin, which is a place I know my mother visited several times. I think I still have cousins there. It was meticulously researched and only slightly over-written in that "first novel, name-dropping" style, but I was thoroughly engrossed nonetheless.
I arrived home after two entirely matter-of-fact flights in the early afternoon. From there it was grocery shopping, mass, and then dinner prep, as usual. And now I have to prepare myself to plunge back into the work world, and I just want to dive back into another book instead!
This is why I shouldn't read unless I have an actual school holiday. I always want to read more, more, more. I am an insatiable reader, I just manage to keep it under control most of the time. Still, it was a lovely weekend and I do feel refreshed.
Monday, October 14, 2019
ick
It turns out that the coming-down-with-a-cold feeling was accurate. I woke up yesterday with a raw throat and nasty drainage. I suppose I should be happy I'm not congested, but said drainage is making my stomache feel queasy today.
Who's ready to go back to school after the long weekend? Not me, not feeling like this.
I did finish a lot of grading and can do more tonight, but tomorrow is going to be a rough day if I'm not any better.
The papers I dragged my feet on grading were, on the whole, about as wretched as I expected them to be. Sometimes when the whole batch is lousy I just want to throw it out (as in, not put it in the gradebook). It's not a crime -- not every little thing has to go into the gradebook. But these ones, they're going in, and the students will just have to face the consequences.
This is the point where I lower the hammer: I've told them 4 or 5 weeks in a row exactly how to fix their papers, and the vast majority of them just don't do it. I spent hours and hours (and hours and hours) making detailed comments so that they could do well, but from here it seems that was all wasted effort.
I will have to rethink the research paper process for next year, because I do not want to go through this again! It's contrary to the stated goal of the science project portfolio, which is to make the process and the outcome better for everyone. So far, that's not happening... but then again, I graded the least-experienced class first, so maybe the other classes will be better? Here's hoping.
Who's ready to go back to school after the long weekend? Not me, not feeling like this.
I did finish a lot of grading and can do more tonight, but tomorrow is going to be a rough day if I'm not any better.
The papers I dragged my feet on grading were, on the whole, about as wretched as I expected them to be. Sometimes when the whole batch is lousy I just want to throw it out (as in, not put it in the gradebook). It's not a crime -- not every little thing has to go into the gradebook. But these ones, they're going in, and the students will just have to face the consequences.
This is the point where I lower the hammer: I've told them 4 or 5 weeks in a row exactly how to fix their papers, and the vast majority of them just don't do it. I spent hours and hours (and hours and hours) making detailed comments so that they could do well, but from here it seems that was all wasted effort.
I will have to rethink the research paper process for next year, because I do not want to go through this again! It's contrary to the stated goal of the science project portfolio, which is to make the process and the outcome better for everyone. So far, that's not happening... but then again, I graded the least-experienced class first, so maybe the other classes will be better? Here's hoping.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
learn something new every week!
It was a wretched day at school. I was sabotaged by our (incompetent) ISP, who did not come out to repair our wifi equipment until around 2PM, by which time all my classes were over. So instead of my students being able to share and peer edit their documents online, I had to fight the constantly-dropping connect to get their papers printed out so they would have something to do. Then, of course, they didn't really do anything but socialize, since they couldn't actually edit their papers.
That'll teach me not to have a backup lesson plan in case of technology failure! But today was especially bad since the students are now off on a 4-day weekend. It's our miniature "fall break" and I never assign homework over breaks like this if I can help it. We were at the end of a unit in both grades and there was no way I was starting another one. I'm still turning it over in the back of my head, what we should have done, and I'm still thinking that the hardcopy work-around was the best option, even if it was far from great.
The hassles were compounded by the fact that just last weekend, DH moved us all over to a new cellphone provider, and I couldn't get a mobile hotspot to help me print the papers out more easily. It took approximately 2 hours when it should have taken about 20 minutes, because the connection kept dropping. And of course I couldn't supervise the students while I was fighting to get their papers printed! It was just a very frustrating day, but still: lesson learned.
The other thing I learned? Hives can be caused by 1) viruses or 2) thyroid problems. I feel like I've been fighting off a cold for three weeks now, which is implausible to say the least. More likely this is another side-effect of my new dosage. For a while I had been thinking I was getting bitten by random mosquitoes (we do have some around school), but there aren't any mosquitoes or fleas at home and I'll just be sitting here and all of a sudden I've got itchy red welts on my hands or feet, or occasionally my neck. The pattern of localization tipped me off that something weird was going on, then a colleague mentioned to me this week that her daughter, a student in my home room, was dealing with hives as she was coming down with a cold. This absolutely blew my mind, because I've also had that coming-down-with-a-cold feeling for a while and hives, not bug bites! But in researching it just now, thyroid issues popped up as a common cause of chronic hives. I'm at about week 4 I'd say, so 2 more weeks and they classify as chronic. Let me add this to the list of complaints to mention to my doctor once I get my bloodwork done...
About that: I had an appointment for Wednesday at lunch which I had to cancel because I read the order and it said the draw had to be between 7 and 8AM. Ha! Let's see if I can manage to get that done in the next month.
Between the frustrations at work, the general fatigue and body aches, and the now-ever-present itchyness of hives, I'm about ready to just say forget it and put myself back on my old dose. I don't because I know Dr. A has my long-term health in mind and she is concerned that my old dose was stressing my heart and weakening my bones. That said, I'd rather live a shorter, less painful life than a longer one if I'm going to be feeling like this all the time.
That's probably just the (chronic) irritation talking. If I could just get more than 6 hours of sleep, catch up on all my grading, and not be itchy for a day, I think I'd feel a lot better. At least tomorrow is a non-contact day, but the trade-off is getting up early to drive to Xavier College Prep downtown for in-service. I am very much regretting not taking the day off! (Didn't I say that last year? Hmmm.)
That'll teach me not to have a backup lesson plan in case of technology failure! But today was especially bad since the students are now off on a 4-day weekend. It's our miniature "fall break" and I never assign homework over breaks like this if I can help it. We were at the end of a unit in both grades and there was no way I was starting another one. I'm still turning it over in the back of my head, what we should have done, and I'm still thinking that the hardcopy work-around was the best option, even if it was far from great.
The hassles were compounded by the fact that just last weekend, DH moved us all over to a new cellphone provider, and I couldn't get a mobile hotspot to help me print the papers out more easily. It took approximately 2 hours when it should have taken about 20 minutes, because the connection kept dropping. And of course I couldn't supervise the students while I was fighting to get their papers printed! It was just a very frustrating day, but still: lesson learned.
The other thing I learned? Hives can be caused by 1) viruses or 2) thyroid problems. I feel like I've been fighting off a cold for three weeks now, which is implausible to say the least. More likely this is another side-effect of my new dosage. For a while I had been thinking I was getting bitten by random mosquitoes (we do have some around school), but there aren't any mosquitoes or fleas at home and I'll just be sitting here and all of a sudden I've got itchy red welts on my hands or feet, or occasionally my neck. The pattern of localization tipped me off that something weird was going on, then a colleague mentioned to me this week that her daughter, a student in my home room, was dealing with hives as she was coming down with a cold. This absolutely blew my mind, because I've also had that coming-down-with-a-cold feeling for a while and hives, not bug bites! But in researching it just now, thyroid issues popped up as a common cause of chronic hives. I'm at about week 4 I'd say, so 2 more weeks and they classify as chronic. Let me add this to the list of complaints to mention to my doctor once I get my bloodwork done...
About that: I had an appointment for Wednesday at lunch which I had to cancel because I read the order and it said the draw had to be between 7 and 8AM. Ha! Let's see if I can manage to get that done in the next month.
Between the frustrations at work, the general fatigue and body aches, and the now-ever-present itchyness of hives, I'm about ready to just say forget it and put myself back on my old dose. I don't because I know Dr. A has my long-term health in mind and she is concerned that my old dose was stressing my heart and weakening my bones. That said, I'd rather live a shorter, less painful life than a longer one if I'm going to be feeling like this all the time.
That's probably just the (chronic) irritation talking. If I could just get more than 6 hours of sleep, catch up on all my grading, and not be itchy for a day, I think I'd feel a lot better. At least tomorrow is a non-contact day, but the trade-off is getting up early to drive to Xavier College Prep downtown for in-service. I am very much regretting not taking the day off! (Didn't I say that last year? Hmmm.)
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