May 18th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

I’ll give you 5 choices regarding the word Hashimoto:

1. Yoshi’s cousin from Super Mario Brothers who never became as famous, thus why you’ve never heard of him.

2. A transliteration of Nolan in Japanese

3. Japanese Hashbrowns

4. The first baby to have a reality show in Japan

5. The physician who first described the symptoms of a thyroid disease

Ding Ding Ding Ding!!!!  You win….Japanese Hashbrowns!!!!  Just kidding.  All joking aside now, I found out yesterday that I have Hashimoto’s Disease, aka Autoimmune Thyroiditis.  For some reason, my own body doesn’t like my thyroid and has been attacking it the past few years.  Don’t ask me why they aren’t friends- they just aren’t.  My thyroid has thus been unable to produce much thyroid hormone for my body.  Thankfully, a little thyroid medication is supposed to make up for this lack and help me feel better.  I truly hope so.  The following pictures were taken of a backpacking trip we took in August of 2005, almost 5 years ago.  I carried 40 lbs on my back and we were out hiking around for 8 days.  That was my last time backpacking.  Not long after this my health started going downhill and I didn’t know why.  All I knew was that I could no longer hike the way I used to without getting extremely exhausted and depressed afterwards.  Over the past few years, the symptoms became more and more pronounced until I couldn’t even walk 1/4 mile anymore without suffering consequences.  Grocery shopping required a 3 hour nap afterwards to recover.  I often look at these photos and really hope that someday I’ll be out there in those mountains again, this time with not only my husband but with my beautiful son as well.

I’ll let you know how I progress with the medication and some other treatments for some other health issues that I have as well.

So thank you Hashimoto for helping to figure out this disease back in 1912 so that I today in 2010 could have a few simple blood tests done to discover a nameless illness I’ve been fighting for years now.  Love that guy!