First Post

I chose to start this blog with a quick photo summary of the thyroid eye disease I experienced. I thought it be appropriate to start with the climax of the story.

The beginning of my senior year of high school was everything I set it up to be. I had worked hard academically throughout my entire school career. I was enrolled in challenging courses, I had friends and I had a boyfriend. I loved how I looked. I thought very highly of myself and my appearance. I was confident. By Springtime, as if overnight, something changed. I did not notice anything was truly wrong with me at first. I was extremely active with sports and I exercised frequently. I was in very good shape, but always trying to improve. Gradually, my eyes began to take on a 'starry' appearance. By my graduation in June of 2008 my face was already transformed. Everyone told me there was something 'not right' about my eyes. As a typical 18 year old, I rarely removed my contact lenses at night. Actually, I stayed up practically all night until I fell asleep under textbooks. So, proper contact lens removal rarely occurred. I figured the reason for my stare-like eyes were the contacts. So I went the the eye doctor and received my lecture and carried on. Time went on, I was still neglectful. I was very busy with schoolwork, softball and socializing. I found that my eyes were still not right. Soon I graduated and immediately took off to college across the country. I started summer college courses within 3 weeks after graduating high school! With all the changes and excitement, my "eye issue" was still a low-end priority. Then one day I attempted to remove the contacts--and couldn't. I struggled for about 3 days to remove them. Later I found out from a new eye doctor that there were no contact lenses in my eyes and I had been irritating them for nothing. This  endeavor ended up causing tears on my cornea, which I later found out. So I bought new glasses and vowed to not wear contacts for as long as it took for my eyes to get better...............that was 30 months ago and they only got worse.

It's important to know that I had been experiencing other bizarre symptoms at the same time during my senior year. However since I had misattributed the cause of my eye condition to contact lens neglect, along with my eye doctors, I went undiagnosed with the actual cause for a long time. In the midst of my eye doctor visits complaining about my eyes having a starry appearance and potentially due to contact lens neglect, I was also visiting an MD discussing my heart palpitations and panicky feelings that I would get from time to time. Those doctors ran an EKG that was normal and sent me on my way.

I spent the first summer of college becoming full-blow symptomatic. I was hot all the time. Moving from NJ to FL seemed to be the logical reason. My eyes progressively worsened and I had an insatiable appetite.

By November, approximately 9 months after the estimated onset of my symptoms, I was finally diagnosed with hyperthyroidism caused by Graves Disease.