How, High Are You?

No, not that kind of high.

I suspect that my thyroid levels are now high.

There have been quite a few suspicious symptoms in the past couple days.  I've been hot a lot.  Really hot.  "Turn on the air in the car when it's 65 degrees out" hot.   (Or as the Hubster says, I'm "all the hotness."  Thanks, honey!).  I've had a lot of trouble getting to sleep, even though I'm tired.  I'm getting my heart arrhythmia a lot lately (fortunately not when I'm skating, though).  A couple of times I've felt shaky and lousy for a couple of hours.  Hot, shaky, and heart arrhythmias are all symptoms of hyperthyroidism. (Although the arrhythmia can also be exacerbated by hypothyroidism, as it was for me right before I was diagnosed 2 years ago).

And then there was yesterday.

Yesterday I went for a skate at our favorite 10K trail with my sister Energizer Bunny and her friend Cop Lady.  Since I've signed myself up for the North Shore Inline Marathon, which happens in three weeks, I figure I'd better do some distance skating.  So I did three laps of the trail, with no draft because I couldn't keep up with the other two.  My lap times were not spectacular, and yet my average heart rate was 185.  That's average, not max.  In the past, laps at a similar or slightly faster pace have produced an average HR of 155.  Then, after the skate, I felt really lousy and my HR didn't drop below 90 for over three hours.  Finally, when I went to bed I got my heart arrhythmia--runs of PVC's, one randomly every 1-10 beats--for the better part of three hours.  Not exactly conducive to getting to sleep!  And when I woke up, I took my pulse (morning HR is a good way to monitor for overtraining), and I was still having so many PVC's that my HR was 46.  Usual is 56 or so for me; PVC's cause a pause in the pulse, which makes the overall count-per-minute lower if you get lots of them.  Which probably explains why I skate really slow when I get lots of them.

So, yesterday was fun.  And then today's workout was another .5 on the 1-10 scale.  A planned 6x3K on the oval turned into 2x3K when the lap times (which should have been no more than 50 seconds on a really bad day) approached one minute.

So it's time to check the ol' thyroid levels.  It's been almost a month since my last dosage change so I'm due for a blood test again very soon anyway, but I decided I'd like to know sooner rather than later if I'm heading in the hyper direction.  So I went in today and had blood drawn, and I'm not going to be surprised if the levels are a bit high this time.  And high levels make you feel just as crappy as low levels do. So I'm guessing we've got some more dosage fine tuning to do.

On the plus side, when the nurse was taping the cotton ball over the needle-poke site on my arm, she commented that I'm a "good little clotter."  So there is something positive to report.