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“Was it your hormones?” Lex stops drawing circles on my knee. I can’t see her face to know what she’s thinking, but I can guess. “There’ve been some things I noticed, but only because—”
“You’re a stalker.”
“—I grew up in a house full of females.”
She releases another one of her earth-shattering sighs. “It was my thyroid.”
I figured it was her hormones affecting her; I just didn’t know in what way. Now I can officially rule out pregnancy.
“So, what happened?”
“The symptoms started when I was sixteen. My weight began to yo-yo. At first I gained a lot at once, then I couldn’t stop losing it, no matter how often I ate. I’d go from sleeping too much to not enough. My anxiety was practically uncontrollable. I just… I didn’t know everything was connected, at least not by something treatable. It’s not like I could go to a doctor and ask, so I blamed it all on my new lifestyle. It made sense. The stress from…everything with my parents, moving into a warehouse with a stranger, then working at The Playground. Even though I suddenly had access to more food, I still wasn’t eating correctly. My schedule was the opposite of what I was used to. My body was underconstantphysical and emotional demand. After a while, I decided to shut one off to make the other more bearable.”
“Cyrus wouldn’t take you to the doctor?”
Her headshake confirms my suspicions.
“What’d it end up being?”
“Graves’ disease.”
Disease. “That sounds fucking scary.” And fatal. “What is it?”
“It’s an autoimmune disease that causes your thyroid to overproduce. It affected all aspects of my life.”
“But you got a diagnosis as soon as you married Kordin, right?”
“Not right away, no. After I got married and my lifestyle changed again, some of the symptoms went away while different ones appeared.”
“So, when’d you find out?”
“Only a couple years ago.”
“Why so long? You had health insurance and money. You could afford any doctor you wanted probably.” Unless Kordin also prevented her from seeking medical attention.
“Without an idea what the cause could be, I didn’t know where to start. I saw a regular doctor and a gynecologist, but because everybody’s symptoms are different, Graves’ disease can be hard to diagnose sometimes, impossible if your doctor doesn’t listen to you and treat you individually instead of just as another faceless patient they stand to make a profit off of by prescribing you prescription after prescription after prescription. I went years just trying out different birth control methods before I was referred to an endocrinologist.”
“Okay, so you found a specialist. Then what? Did they listen to you?”
“Then…I found out I was literally broken, not just metaphorically. My husband started fucking other women who weren’t either. I was told I had to start radioactive iodine treatment or get my thyroid removed, so I decided to look into less invasive routes which took me all over while also giving Kordin more time to spend with his mistresses. I discovered a holistic doctor who prescribed me the most disgusting tea to ever exist that I drank three times a day, every day, for a year.”
Is that the tea in her pantry? I gagged just smelling it. I can’t imagine drinking it once, let alone for that long.
“Did it help?”
“Eventually, yeah. That, along with a compete diet overhaul and other lifestyle changes, I was able to go into remission.”
“You’re not anymore though?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t gone and gotten tested again. It’s just little things… Like you pointed out, there’ve been some signs that make me think it might be malfunctioning again.”
“Can it just happen randomly, at any time?” That’s gotta be hard to live with knowing. Every fucking hiccup from the norm would make a person worried.
“I’ll always have Graves’ disease, but there are definitely factors that can cause a flare-up.”
“Like what?”
“Mm, stress is a big one.”
