After a long hiatus

After Thirteen Hours closed, I took a much-needed mental and physical health break for the entire holiday season. I'm still learning the value of things like saying no and doing nothing, and it's a daily struggle. It's hard to disassociate guilt and idleness.

But I wasn't totally unoccupied all these weeks. I've been focusing on my day job and was rewarded with a bonus and a salary increase at the end of the year, which was gratifying. I've been putting extra time and effort into my friendships and my marriage as well. I'm also taking some time to consider my future, both in the business and otherwise. Patrick is still underemployed and our little family continues to struggle financially, and the constant rebudgeting is like manning a dinghy in a hurricane. In other words, your typical new year/new decade thoughts and activities.

Additionally, 2010 has brought me an unexpected hurdle in terms of my health. Some peculiarities in the girl-doctor arena prompted an office visit and a blood test, and the results of the blood test were very abnormal. After a couple days of panic and worry, during which I mentally diagnosed myself with cancer and planned my funeral, I found out it was a only deficient thyroid. I've been referred to a specialist, who I'll see later this week, and who should be able to give me an official diagnosis and treatment that are pretty run-of-the-mill.

I say "only," but if I truly have hypothyroidism, it's going to explain most of what's been wrong with me my whole life. Even things I thought were just luck of the genetic draw - like extremely dry skin, nails that chip easily, and weight sticking to my middle - plus things I thought were just annoying physiological quirks, like ringing in my ears and being cold all the time, are the effects of an underactive thyroid. Most significantly for my life-satisfaction, hypothryoidism causes feelings of depression and extreme lethargy even in the most mildly dysfuntional of patients, and my levels were through the roof. It almost makes me cry to think that all my life I thought I was just incurably lazy and glum.

You might ask, Janie, if you've had all these symptoms forever, why has it taken so long to discover their cause? I believe, and my hunch will be confirmed or disproved at the doctor this week, that my condition was exacerbated when I started medication for GERD. Evidently, Nexium can sometimes interfere with the hormones that regulate the endocrine system, namely, the thyroid. Moreover, treatment for hypothyroidism sometimes treats GERD itself without any extra medicine at all. The symptoms that promted my initial visit to the GYN started around the same time I started taking Nexium.

But lazy or no, healthy or dysfuntional, broke or rich, you knew I couldn't stay away from the stage for long. Read on for further postings about my upcoming projects for the first half of 2010.