The first sign was nearly three weeks ago when I went to work out. It had been more than a week since I had been to the YMCA, and the elliptical machines were busy, so I went to the gym to shoot baskets. About ten minutes into shooting, a muscle on the front of my right leg began to tighten and to burn, to the point that I had to stop, sit down and wait for Jackie. I have had muscle cramps before, but never that muscle. Still, no big deal.
A week later, I decided to walk to the store for a couple of items. The store is about a 25-minute walk, so it's good exercise if I have time. However, by the time I had gone one block, that same muscle started to tighten again, and before I got 1/4 mile, I turned around and limped back to my car. I couldn't walk that far. Less than a week later, it happened again when I took Lucas to the University of Washington. Same muscle. I struggled through, but I couldn't really walk.
As I have aged, I have given some thought to the disadvantages of growing old. OK, no disadvantages at all, given the alternative. But what I mean is, what sorts of effects of aging are bad enough that I will begin to feel that they are really making my life worse? The first two things on the list are mental deterioration (like Alzheimer's, not like forgetting to shave one day) and being unable to walk, in large part because I want to travel and be able to walk around while I can. Somewhere after that are things like losing the ability to drive, see reasonably well, or hear.
Anyway, there I was, unable to walk. In addition, I began to feel very tired. I developed a cough that stayed too long. My body just felt wrong, with a lot of little symptoms, and I was afraid that something was seriously wrong, at the same time hoping it was something that could be fixed relatively easily as opposed to, say, kidney failure. My blood sugar has been good, but diabetes does bad things to you, and I don't know how long I had diabetes before it was diagnosed, so who knew? So yesterday, I finally went to see a doctor.
Now for a little side trip. I have gone into a hypothyroid state at least three times before: once when they were adjusting my dosage after my thyroid was removed, and twice more when I stopped taking thyroid medication for testing purposes. It sucks, but anyway, I know what it feels like. I did not know if the muscle problem could be related, but I recognized many of my other symptoms as being consistent with hypothyroidism. I felt cold. I had gained 15 pounds quickly. I felt like crap, very tired. You get ungodly tired when you don't have thyroid medication, not just regular tired; there's a difference. I was beginning to lose interest in food and even in anything to drink.
OK, it all seems obvious now, but it didn't seem likely that I could be severely low on thyroxine, because I was taking it every day, same dosage I have taken for two years or more. The only possibility was that something was wrong with the pills I was taking, which seemed hard to believe. Nothing had changed except that instead of taking two pills a day, 125 micrograms each, they had finally come up with a 250 microgram pill, so I was only taking one. Or so I thought.
Did I mention I just got invited to join Mensa? It true.
I went to my doctor's office, and the nurse took my blood pressure, temperature, pulse, all fine. Then she went through my medications with me. When she got to thyroxine, it was listed as 25 micrograms. Not 250. I told her I thought it was 250. She said that people get confused between the micrograms and milligrams. That may be true of "people," but not me, not so much. I asked her if 25 micrograms was a large dosage. She said no, it was really tiny. I do not take a tiny amount of thyroxine, not by anyone's standards.
The only thing is, I have an endocrinologist, and this was my regular doctor. Only my endocrinologist prescribes thyroxine for me, so it just looked like someone had dropped a zero in their notes. Still, by that time, the light had finally come on. Or more like the bright red lights were flashing and the fire alarm was going off. Could it be that simple? When the nurse stepped out of the room, I called Jackie and asked her to check the pill bottle. The pills were .025 milligrams; for those "people" who have trouble with the decimal places, that's 25 micrograms. I had not looked at the pill bottles closely, and I had been taking one tenth of my thyroxine dosage for a month.
Nice work, Mensa boy.
I happened to be going to the grocery store after my doctor appointment, and my pharmacy is there, so I asked if they could check and see if my prescription had changed substantially. They looked it up, and they saw that yes, it had dropped by a factor of ten. How did this happen? When my regular doctor's office sent in a prescription for my diabetes medicines, they had also prescribed 25 micrograms of thyroxine, and the pharmacy had replaced my old prescription with the new one. My regular doctor should not be prescribing that medication for me at all, let alone dropping a rather important zero. He doesn't even test me for that. Yikes.
The pharmacist was clearly alarmed when he saw what had happened, and give him credit, he jumped all over it. He told me that my endocrinologist's prescription was still valid, and he said that they would fill it right then. When I came back for my pills a few minutes later, he admonished me for not paying more attention when something changed. A fair point. I was enormously relieved.
I came home and took nine more pills, although it feels wrong to take a handful of prescription pills like that. I took ten today. Ten more tomorrow, and they will all be gone, a month's worth in three days, and then I have my 125 microgram pills again. I am almost back to normal already, though feeling a bit stupid that it took me so long to figure it out. No lasting harm done. Still, yikes.
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