Where the time may have gone and why

Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, said to be from 1968.


When something is askew with me, my first thought is character defect, followed by general disintegration. It was not until learning last week that I seem to have been overdosed on thyroid supplements that I could make a new assumption.

One of the primary symptoms of excess thyroid, either on its own or via supplement overdose, is confusion, reduced ability to concentrate. Also high on the list are fatigue, anxiety, heart palpitations, tremors/shaking, elevated blood pressure, fever, joint aches and the oh-so-unwelcome thinning hair. Doesn't this paint a lovely picture?

When change in function creeps in slowly - especially if that change involves a somewhat wandering mind - being able to say what, exactly, is wrong is like trying to make a fallen souffle rise again. It did not involve memory, that has a category of its own, reserved for all after a certain age. Nor was it about loss of intellect. The closest I can come to a word is not even a word. The unword is drifty.

That this state of thyroid excess had been present for some time before the lab detected it is something only I know to be true. In medicine, numbers rule. There was no verifiable indication six months ago, but some of the symptoms have been with me for a few years. However, the drifty state was newer. It manifested, along with the fatigue, as difficulty sustaining focus. It explains why I have not been able to keep up with the writers whose blogs I follow, nor to comment very much when I visited. After a decent interval, I'll go back and read my posts of the past few months to see if they hold up.

There is an esoteric side to this, being that I have come to know myself as being inclined to a natural state of mental, let us say, float. From a lifetime of wondering why I either wandered - in a state of no-time - through meadows of my imagining, or wished that I did, I have begun to recognize this as me. Like once trying to wear too-small shoes because they were adorable and on sale, I have soul bunions from ways of being that did not fit the matrix.

Easy to understand that, as the drifting increased, I assumed that, rather than being authentic, I had tumbled over into sloth. The thin lines we allow ourselves, the rigid expectations. When I needed to do nothing, to nap, to simply be, I rarely allowed myself to do so without guilt. Consciousness, if it arrives at all, is the product of a lengthy gestation.

It is the fifth day of a reduced dose and, placebo effect or wishful thinking, I am less shaky and more present. Relief is my only response to learning the source, as best we can guess, of my symptoms. I am too happy to know that I have not been carried away from myself on some unexplainable tide, that this isn't a sign, not a permanent affliction. I may even be able to go about in the world without thinking I should spray my visible scalp with some gimcrack, tv-offered product supposed to cloak baldness. That my twitchiness, result of my particular life, will probably remain is something I can live with, if the shaking hands become still.

Reprieves, in my experience, are granted when we have no idea they are possible. Events combine, information comes to light, people appear. I am grateful to be sailing home to my real self. The reunion celebration has already begun.