I was diagnosed in January 1998 with an overactive thyroid caused by Graves’ disease.

Looking back it was, I suppose, almost inevitable that I would develop some thyroid condition. I now live in Melbourne but I grew up in Tasmania in the 1950s and 1960s where we used to take iodine tablets at infant school due to the supposed local iodine deficiency. I remember being the tablet monitor in Grade 2 making sure every-one got their tablets - and took home enough tablets for the school holidays.

As a child I remember a great aunty on my mother’s side with a goitre which, as kids, my cousins and I found a source of enormous interest. Then in the 1960s my uncle on my father’s side had a thyroidectomy. That was the way of dealing with whatever he had at the time. He had terrible mood swing problems and had to spend a short time in a mental hospital. No-one was given any preparation or support for what could be the side effects at that time and I suspect there was no discussion beforehand of choices of treatment. Anyway, he has completely recovered; is extremely well-adjusted and a very amusing person to be with now. One of his sisters, an aunty on my father’s side, had hypothyroidism.

And then just a few years before my diagnosis, my brother was diagnosed with Graves! It had to happen to me eventually!

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The most difficult symptoms for me have been the mood swings. I used to be such an even tempered person and I am just not used to moods jumping around - and you can keep both the depression and the anxiety attacks. I couldn’t believe myself one day when I had just arrived at work and, in the car in the middle of the car park, I just burst into tears. That was just not me.

Through the fours years or so I have had this I have managed to not miss a day of work. There have been many, many days when I struggled through a bowl of cereal in order to eat something before heading off. And there were a few days at work when my output was extremely low; it was fortunate that the days when I was feeling worst were days when the pressure at work was low.

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I have just had to accept that I have a lifelong condition for which the treatments take a long time to take effect and .... to just hang in there!

David

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