Farida , 45, a confident looking woman, was at her wits end. She ate sensibly, exercised, had a decent family life with a caring husband and a child. Cultural norms, extended family expectations, and a fairly determined nature, made her hanker for another child.
However, that was not to be.Lots of specialists were consulted, medicines were ingested. It did not help that most of these medications were actually hormonal.What happened was it threw her hormonal orchestra into complete cacophony. Depression was the order of the day. Reproductive hormones went for a toss.
Her biggest problem was this diarrhoea , that simply refused to go away.
Occasionally she got , what she soon discovered, were palpitations . At first she thought she was putting on weight, and in general, showing signs of getting old ! A visit to the doctor confirmed that she had absolutely no weight problems, and was doing fine on that count.
She was asked to undergo the thyroid tests, and it revealed that , among various things, her TSH was pointing to a hyperthyroid situation. She was simply showing signs of a overperforming thyroid gland.
For 5-6 years she was on medication; earlier, a combination of neomercazole and eltroxin. Later on dosages were modified and she was a living example of how a person can swing between hypo and hyperthyroid situations.
This continued for three years until her Thyroid levels were normal. She now takes no medicine for thyroid, but continues to be plagued by giddiness, breathlessness, syncope, and occasional abdominal pain.
"The saving grace, is I have now been menopausal for a year" , she said. Slowly but surely, her hormones are settling down after a chaotic lifetime. Age has also brought about more acceptance of what cannot be, and the emphasis today is to develope some interests of her own, so as to occupy herself in interesting ways, when her only child leaves the nest....