Did you know that when your hair starts suddenly starts to fall out, rapidly fall out — like whole clumps clogging the drain with each shower until 5 weeks later when barrettes that used to not hold even half of your hair fall out because there isn’t enough hair on your entire head to hold them in place — that it is a sign that your body is under stress or crisis and is shutting down hair cells in order to redirect energy elsewhere to places where it is needed?<\/p>\n
Stress or crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course THIS is when I have stress or crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 When we are waiting to find out if that Blue Cross Blue Shield family health insurance plan is going to start on August 1st.\u00c2\u00a0 Although I may have COBRA now, if I see a doctor and then discover that BCBS has denied us, I feel pretty certain I will never be able to buy a health insurance policy in the United States again.<\/p>\n
Looking at the full picture… extreme fatigue, vertigo, dizziness, depression, inability to loose weight (and unexplained weight gain), heavy heavy heavy long long long monthlies, and now rapid hair loss… this is starting to look like an underactive thyroid.<\/p>\n
I put a call into the primary care doctor I saw back in March, when I thought that my fatigue and blues were caused by anemia.\u00c2\u00a0 Labs showed I was healthy and fine (just slightly anemic, which she called ‘probably menstrual’ and not to worry).\u00c2\u00a0 When my hair started to fall out after we got back from Peru, I figured it was anemia again and started taking iron.\u00c2\u00a0 I was patient, but it hasn’t gone away.\u00c2\u00a0 Now when I reach back and feel my hair, I have to fight back tears.\u00c2\u00a0 My hair is almost gone.<\/p>\n
So what are my choices?\u00c2\u00a0 What can my doctor really do?\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing unless I see her, which I can’t do until we know we have insurance.\u00c2\u00a0 The way I see it, I have two options: do nothing and get sicker, or, research thyroid meds and find a way to get them myself and do my best to figure out if\/how they work.\u00c2\u00a0 I can do a lot of stuff to myself that is harmful without infringing on any laws or endangering anyone’s profession.\u00c2\u00a0 So what is so bad about getting medications, which may help the problem?\u00c2\u00a0 Just trying to consider the big picture and remember that I (hopefully) won’t feel this way forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did you know that when your hair starts suddenly starts to fall out, rapidly fall out — like whole clumps clogging the drain with each shower until 5 weeks later when barrettes that used to not hold even half of your hair fall out because there isn’t enough hair on your entire head to hold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[123,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2631,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}