I was standing at the bulletin board reading at work when suddenly I heard my name being called. I turned around to find a woman being literally dragged toward me by two of her coworkers. Immediately I notice she has a HUGE goiter. Her friends were saying “Lisa, you have Grave’s disease, tell her about it.” I knew her two friends from discussing their underactive thyroids, but this woman was just diagnosed with Grave’s after a trip to the emergency room and scared out of her mind because she had no idea what was happening, other than she was scheduled for RAI next week. Every week lately I have had people tell me about someone I work with who has some type of thyroid disorder. Many have Grave’s, but more have thyroids that just died. One particular department of about twenty people, more than half have thyroid disease. I am astounded by the number of people I work with who have thyroid disorders. I mentioned this to my doctor and he said it was just an extremely common problem. A little paranoid part of me wonders if there something weird going on where I work. It just seems that there are too many of us to be a coincidence. Are the statistics wrong and there are really a lot more people with thyroid problems than anyone realizes? If it is so common, why aren’t people routinely tested? If I see red flags when I hear people talking about symptoms they’ve been having, why don’t some doctors see the same red flags? There is one woman I work with who was having horrible leg cramps. She was tired all the time, depressed for no reason and couldn’t lose weight. She had been to nuerologists trying to find out why her legs hurt. They couldn’t find a reason. I asked if she’d had her thyroid checked and she said no. She went the next day and found out she was hypo. They started her on Synthroid and her legs stopped hurting. How hard was that? If it’s so common why aren’t the doctors around here catching it?
Lisa R.
