Second Guessing

I have a thyroid condition. I take one pill a day, and there are times when the days and weeks blur and I forget to take my pill, sometimes for days on end.

I can usually tell when I have gone a few days without my thyroid pills. My mood changes, I get depressed. I get tired and my limbs feel heavy weighted. I get a numbness like a warm burning in my jaw and behind my eyes and I generally feel like crap.

With a lightbulb above my head, I eventually realize that I have forgotten to take my pill and that my thyroid levels are low. So I double up my dosage, have a good nights sleep, and usually the next day I start to return to normal.

When I take my thyroid pills daily, I am unaware of how dependent I have become on them. When I feel fine, I do not appreciate how effective they are in normalizing me, and it is only when I an not taking them, that I do realize how much I need them and how well they work.

So lately I have been enjoying a relatively pain free life. I would say 80% pain free with low to medium activity. In fact, I have been feeling "ok" so much so that I have begun to forget how horrible I feel when I do not take my opiates.

So now that I am feeling better I am wondering if this medication is necessary. This is how I think I should normally feel as far as daily pain and discomfort. And I wonder how I would feel if I stopped taking my oxy.

So I did jsut that - I skipped a couple pills today. And WOW! as hours go by, the pain is starting to come back. And what a reminder it is!

How did I cope with this pain before? Was it always this bad? Do I have less a tolerance for the pain? Or has my condition continued to deteriorate,? And I unaware of the continued damage due to my blocked pain receptors? Maybe I had become accustom to the pain before the meds and now that I have spent some time without pain, I do not have the tolerance, or natural pain inhibitors to cope with the pain?

As the pain comes back, I appreciate why I take these pills and how effective they really are. And I guess one of the reasons I am writing this blog is to remind me of the reasons why I take the pills. To remind me of where I have been, and what it was like before.

Save the second guessing for another day.