My Thyroid Journey
 

My name is Kiara. I have Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroidism. I have suffered from these two diseases since 2007. I was in my young 20s, and I could barely keep my eyes open from exhaustion and fatigue, and I was losing all my hair. I was married and had no interest in doing much of anything. I was in college and thought my tiredness was due to my busy schedule.

I went for my yearly women’s checkup and told my OBGYN how I felt. He said that he would run blood work. I got a call a week later saying that my TSH was at 7.3 and that he was going to call in levothyroxine for me. Initially, I felt like a new person. But let’s back up.

The Back Story

My back story is that for my fifth anniversary, we went to Mexico, and I drank some “bad” water and got a GI infection. They thought I had contracted hepatitis A. I did, but whatever the “bug” was has settled into my thyroid and kicked off the Hashimoto’s, which initially caused my thyroid to storm for months until it settled on hypothyroidism. Now, the theory is that since there is heavy thyroid dysfunction in my family, it was likely to happen once I got pregnant for the first time, which stands to reason since I’m genetically predisposed to thyroid issues. But it happened sooner than later.

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Back to my thyroid path

Now, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and I went on a knowledge journey. My cholesterol was out of whack, even though I ate healthy and I was in the gym a minimum of three days a week back then. The issues with my triglycerides were due to my thyroid dysfunction. My triglycerides leveled out once my thyroid returned to “normal” function, and it has been fine since.

For YEARS, I had to have my thyroid levels checked every three months. My TSH was not stabilizing. Then, in 2013, when I got pregnant, of course, my thyroid needed more monitoring, and I had years of thyroid yo-yoing. I had four babies in seven years, hence the yo-yoing thyroid and hormones.

In the years between my diagnosis and getting pregnant, I tried all sorts of health journeys without a lot of success in stabilizing my thyroid. I followed what the doctor told me to do: take my Synthroid. But I never really felt my best. The instability was always chalked up to being an emergency department (ED)/trauma nurse (working crazy hours) and being a mom to my littles.

Years passed, and eventually, I returned to school to become a nurse practitioner. Once I started school, I thought I had made a mistake. I love caring for people, but it has become increasingly sad. I was seeing a lot of chronically sick individuals, and it felt as if we were only putting a bandage on their symptoms and nothing was changing. Their quality of life was somewhat maintained but not much improvement. I felt worse the more I worked.

As an emergency department nurse, I saw people on some of their worst days, and generally, we were able to help. For most people, it could only get better for them once they left the ED. But for my primary care patients, it was a road of maintenance, generally, not improvement.

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An illuminated path

I cannot say the first time I heard about functional medicine. However, I always thought that there had to be a different way. Before becoming a nurse and nurse practitioner, I practiced solely as a massage therapist. Looking back, a lot of the coaching I did for my clients is similar to what I do now. I educated myself on health processes and the best natural paths to take. So, I was elated once I learned that functional medicine is an actual field. Root cause medicine, better known as functional medicine, is the path that allows the human body to heal and function as they were made to do.

 

Today

My passion is to walk a wellness journey with my patients that facilitates healing and overall wellness—not just treating and bandaging symptoms. Helping others comes not only from education in functional medicine but also from my wellness journey. Today, my thyroid is the most stable it has been in almost 20 years. I thrive daily through diet, supplements, and the proper bio-identical medications.