How Am I Not Myself?

(by Alison Janssen)

Pre-post, obligatory reaction comment to this week's LOST (spoilers, highlight to view):

CLAIRE! HER BABY! CLAIRE! A DARKNESS! CLAIRE! SAYID! THE DARKNESS! Honestly, I can't watch a single scene featuring Claire without reverting to shouting single-word lines in her accent. CLAY-UH! BAY-BEE! DAHK-NESS! BAY-BEE! But I'm glad she's back, and in full-on Rousseau-mode. It's about time,  Claire. I support your less exclaiming, more shooting turn. Also, actor who plays Ethan: I'm sorry, dude, but there is no possible way I will ever be able to see you in anything else ever and not be frightened of you. Sorry.

Ok, now that that's (momentarily) out of my system (you guys LOST is so good my goodness), let's get to today's post. Here is a thing you might not know about me: I don't have a thyroid. Well, anymore. I USED to have one, in fact, grew it myself, but in the fall of 2005 I had to have it removed, because I had a tumor growing over both hemispheres, and though it wasn't cancerous, it was impeding my windpipe in a serious way, so it had to go. But, because it was growing over both hemispheres of my thyroid (the thyroid is a really neat butterfly shape, btw), they couldn't get the tumor without taking both halves of my thyroid, too. So: thyroidectomy!

Despite my most-sweet requests, they did not let me take the whole thing home in a jar. (The story my family built around the tumor was that it wasn't a tumor at all, but instead, the barely-developed body of my twin sister, whom I'd eaten in the womb like a little baby shark [Barbara, I also am a shark devotee, did you know that some species commit in-utero fratricide?! FOR REALSIES!], but that I hadn't actually properly gobbled her up, and now she was clinging to my windpipe in a desperate attempt to exact revenge and take over my body. So I wanted to bring the thing home in a jar and label it "Sister" and put in on a shelf. What? I LIKE SCI-FI, OK?)

Anyway, they didn't let me keep it, what with the post-op tests they had to run, but they did give me a picture. It's gross but cool, and I'll embed it here, for those brave souls who want to see it. (Take note of the ruler at the bottom of the picture for scale.)

This story is all leading up to the simple fact that I am now dependent on a thyroid-hormone replacement prescription in order to live. It's cool, I don't really mind it, I'm used to taking medicine daily. (As a child, I was dependent upon some pretty heavy barbituates in order to control my epilepsy -- but that's a story for another day!) Occasionally I worry about a Mad-Max-type future, where I'm one of the first to die once society crumbles, because while most people will be hoarding oil and waiter, I'll be all, "Where's the nearest Walgreens, I need some levothyroxine!" But mostly taking my pill is a just a small thing I do every morning, like brushing my teeth and feeding the cats and debating which sweatpants to wear (hooray for work-at-home, seriously).

So I barely think about it. But I do have to have regular blood tests, to check the levels of thyroid hormone in my blood, to make sure that the fake stuff is enough but not too much, and whatever. Last week I had one of those tests. Normal levels should be somewhere in the vicinity of 0.4 and 5.2, or thereabouts. Mine were in the 30s. Whoops!

It's not really a big huge deal, they just changed the dosage of my fake hormone (from the pink pills to the beige pills), and I go back in for another test to check that the change worked. Ok, easy peasy. But then I got to thinking: A person's thyroid has influence over a LOT of the body's functions, and the brain's, too. So what did it mean that, according to the numbers, I was suffering hypothyroidism?

And here's where I got all Huckabee's. How am I not myself?

All through the blood test and resulting nurse consult, I kept saying, "But I feel FINE. I feel NORMAL." It's not like when I haven't eaten enough, and I feel hungry. Or when I haven't hydrated enough during a derby bout, and I feel awful by the last part of the second half. I NOTICE those differences; I can tell that my body doesn't have what it needs, and I know how to fix it. But in this case, my systems are so universally affected, and the change from normal is so subtle and slow, that I don't even notice. For months now -- longer, even -- I haven't had enough thyroid hormone, and yet I've functioned as, I thought, normal. Yes, I do get really, really cold sometimes (I'm always wearing at least two layers, usually four by the end of the day), but, you know, I live in Wisconsin. AND IT'S FEBRUARY.

So obviously, this calls for the very-scientific-and-provable-thesis that I am, IN FACT, a superhero. Because if I've managed to accomplish the feats of late without the full support of my thyroid, then just imagine what I'll be able to do once I'm operating at peak bodily condition!

I'll call myself PRISM (I hope there isn't already one of those. Oh, shit. All the good names are taken.), and my superpower will be that when I'm all jazzed up and excited and the sun hits me, I fly into the air, turn prismatic, and transform the sunbeams into gorgeous, cheery rainbows that I project all over the world, turning everything happy and sunny and pretty, and entertaining cats everywhere.

And then I'll edit 17 books in a single day!

But seriously. The whole "How am I not myself?" thing is great for writing -- and especially crime writing. Have you read Gregg Hurwitz's The Crime Writer? You should. It's about a man who suffers a behavior-altering brain tumor, and is accused of killing his girlfriend. Did he do it? Was it the tumor? He doesn't remember, and doesn't trust himself. What a GREAT concept -- marrying the unreliable narrator with a medical condition so that the narrator is even unreliable to himself!

Think about your characters. Are they all healthy? If not, in what ways does their ill health affect their actions? Or maybe someone is faking sick, to garner sympathy and make other perceive them as less of a threat? (The old Spike-in-the-wheelchair bit.) Or maybe your main character, like me, is suffering an ailment she doesn't even notice -- and once that's fixed, she can save the world.

With rainbows.

Comments

[Ma Fea]

Yikes.
Just sayin'.