Take Your Medicine… Carefully

Remember White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane? Unless you were old enough to be listening to psychedelic music back in 1967, you may not recall how, like Alice in her travels through Wonderland, “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small.” But you may recall Alice’s dilemma with medications from the childhood story. When she followed the directions to “DRINK ME”, she grew too large. When she obeyed the order “EAT ME,” she became quite small.

Much like Alice, I blindly followed directions to add more and more pills to my life. And the results were equally perplexing and catastrophic. Mysteriously, on a routine test, my blood work came back way off the charts for my thyroid TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) test number. It had jumped up over ten times in a few months. I have taken a little Synthroid pill since I was thirty to suppress a benign nodule on my thyroid gland, but in recent years I had been prescribed increasingly lower doses to go along with my decreasing need for this medication as I aged. Then, for no clear reason, my number on this test skyrocketed to the danger zone.

My journey through pill wonderland started when my doctor wondered if I was I more tired than usual because my TSH was a bit low. Ask any senior that question and you will get a blank stare. What’s normal? For a woman with a history of falling asleep watching television shows at 8:00 pm, getting up at ridiculous o’clock, and yet still trying to keep up with her grandkids, who can say? So I entered a cycle of blood draws followed by lower doses…