For the most part, I can really say that things are objectively going my way lately. Parenting is challenging as always, but work is the best it has been in a long time, I don't have any major financial concerns, I've got the best partner ever and I can watch fireworks every night. It should be mostly fun to be me.
The truth is that the hypothyroidism diagnosis really fucked with me. I'm a person who has never so much as needed glasses, and I can't tell you the last time I needed a prescription for anything other than the very infrequent lorazepam I've taken. Heck, getting the Covid vaccine kind of made me feel invincible. I have a follow-up in a few days to see what impact the levothyroxine is having on me, and my suspicion is that it may depend. At first I felt uneven, with wild swings between fatigue and energy, and now that it has leveled out, I'm mostly just hungry all of the time, and my resulting behavior has negated the weight loss I initially had.
But the bigger stress is that I have a colonoscopy and endoscopy coming up in late October. The guidance has changed about when to start doing colonoscopies to age 45, so my doctor felt it was a good idea. The GI says that my history of IBS is not reason to expect something terrible going on in there, but that's not comforting. My doctor ordered the endoscopy because I've had an issue now for about six years, every three to four months, where I have difficulty swallowing. When food gets stuck, sometimes I have to force it back up. A part of me believes that if whatever that is hasn't killed me yet, I shouldn't worry. I've also recently wondered if it was related to a food allergy, since the last two times it happened was with specific food I had. I just don't know.
There are two realities I haven't warmed up to. The first is that if there's a problem, it's there regardless of doing these procedures. The second is that most things they find are not things likely to kill you. I mean, that's the point of colonoscopies in the first place, because even if they find cancer, it's early enough to treat it efficiently.
I suppose this is partially a normal thing for people entering middle age to think about. I'll feel better after the scoping.
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