The Mind-Body Connection

Lately I've been asked quite a few times to share a fun fact about myself. The other day I was at a nice dinner with a group of friends, where everyone went around the table with a fun fact, and I recently joined a new team at work where I was asked to submit a fun fact about myself as an introduction to the organization.

For some reason, the first "fun" fact that springs into mind is about the time I almost died and was totally okay with it. A bit morbid for the select occasions, so I tend to opt for a lighthearted story about growing up with dogs or my most recent travels.

Around this time in April is the anniversary of my official diagnosis of Graves' disease and the day I finally sought an answer for a prolonged period of time of unexplained illness. To this day I still struggle with many of the associated symptoms, but I'm happy and grateful to live a life much closer to normal after years of feeling as though my life was being taken from me.

The following anecdote details (a slightly watered down version of) this time in my life, taken from an old journal entry and blended with commentary from myself today. —

I'm sitting in my 4th period class, AP Psychology to be exact, and I feel sick yet again. There's a video playing on the screen, but I have no interest in paying much attention. I have a nauseating pit in my stomach, and I'm feverish and unsteady. I'm wondering if I should hop in my car and head home for the day.

I excuse myself to the bathroom for the second time that class period— my heart is pounding, my hands are shaky and I need some fresh air. As I swing open the door, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. These days I do my best to avoid looking, because staring back at me is a corpse I don't recognize. My eyes are sunken in with dark circles to match, and I've lost more weight than I ever thought I could. My ribs poke out in a way that I shouldn't be proud of.

I pace back and forth in the restroom, take some deep breaths before heading out and returning to my seat. I'm not new to the idea of mentally convincing myself that I can go home if I really feel like I'm not going to make it. I decide to tough it out for the remainder of the class, and if my legs carry me to the parking lot rather than the student union for lunch, so be it.

I know I'm sick and have been for months. Something is wrong, but I'm telling myself it's all in my head— every teenager goes through this, don't they? My emotions are running high and I've lost a sense of self. Common annoyances cause me to lash out in ways that are uncharacteristic to my typical manner; my cheerful demeanor has gone into hibernation and been replaced with a bad actor wearing my face as a mask. Complete nervous breakdowns are built into my nighttime routine; I feel as though I'm swinging on a pendulum without warning: hot flashes of anger, then a sinking pull of anxiety, then back again, in seconds flat.

My parents are arguing about what my sickness is. Generalized anxiety, depression, eating disorder, a bad case of being a teenager, likely some cocktail combination of all four. Diabetes? Can't be, I'm on a recent health kick and most of the food pyramid is off limits now. It's a good thing I have a doctor father to diagnose me and a pharmacist mother to medicate me. I sense their worry and I can hear the words "My Sunshine is wilting away" come from my mother's lips. They put their heads together to assemble a team of professionals, and I'm slated for what seems to be a roster of assessments and appointments.

I sleep around 1 in the morning, but my sleeping is defined as a mixture of tossing and turning and counting sheep until my thoughts are interrupted by the morning alarm. I'm breaking out in sweats and by the time morning rises at 5, I feel as though I've ran a marathon (or a few).

In the lab, the phlebotomist is preparing me for a full panel. She pokes and prods around my arm and hands; pulling the blood is proving to be a challenge, but eventually she makes contact with a vein that supplies it. She pulls the needle just as the universe begins to go spotty.

The tests come back and I have Graves' disease, and a pretty severe case at that. The doctor is sitting with a sympathetic look on his face as he pragmatically goes over the different treatment options. My mother is running off a list of questions with great concern, but I'm entirely dissociated. I remember laughing at its fitting name, because I felt like I would rather dig my grave right then and there. I go home with bags full of different medications, orders for home rest (during the pandemic this is easy, every day is like home rest), and a strong desire to scroll WebMD.

While genetic predispositions to Graves' exists, the triggering of Graves' can occur by intense levels of stress. It can be brought on by a traumatic event or prolonged periods of unmanageable anxiety, or otherwise exposure to severe stressors. A person could spend their lifetime possessing the gene for Graves', yet never know they had it if they were not the anxious type. For a worrisome girl like myself, it's no surprise to be the youngest patient in the office (The average age to be diagnosed is between 40-60, but I was just freshly 18).

I've struggled with how to go about talking about my sickness or what it's like living with it. I find it embarrassing and even shameful— it's hard to admit that your body is shutting down or giving up on you, and I feel a weight of responsibility for it all. For many years I have battled with feeling like I have failed myself for not being able to control my anxiety, that my body is punishing me for being weak-minded. I have been vulnerable in ways that I have been not proud of due to my inability to mask my extreme emotion. At times, I have shown anger, annoyance, irritability, all as a physical manifestation of this illness. It's not something to be proud of but it's not something I can control, either. It complicates my life as I walk the line between assessing my genuine emotion and a response to the symptoms that I am experiencing.

My experience with this disease highlights to me the impact of the mind-body connection. The idea of "mind-body connection" is colloquially thrown out in workout classes as the instructor walks through deep breathing, but the concept goes a lot deeper than common relaxation exercises. It's a tragically beautiful thing, the way the body and mind rise and fall together. I'm far from a doctor (or any medical profession, for that matter), but I like to think about the mental and the physical as a cemented feedback loop. The brain, nervous system, and immune system are in constant conversation. When one thrives, the other tends to follow. But the inverse is just as true. The disease in my brain is taking my body down with it, or maybe the other way around. I'm not quite sure which is the right way to go about thinking about it. All I can tell myself is to stop thinking, because to worry is to make me sick and to make me sick is to make me worry.

In many ways I think about how to navigate conversations around what it means to have thyroid disease and how it can impact my relationships. Many weekends are spent away from school and now my life as a young adult to come home to the doctor. I miss out on life to make sure I can keep on living the way I want to. In the past couple of years I have dealt with a fair share of flareups (why I decided to pursue a corporate career amongst it all is maybe short sighted thinking). My deepest apologies to those who have seen it all, but a thank you to those who put up with it, too.

In writing this I've challenged myself to put down on paper a topic that has been historically been hard for me to articulate and to accept what has been a more difficult card I've been dealt in my life. It's not much of a fun fact, but a good story that has certainly built character and defined how I live and act in my 20s.

:)