Chapter 1
I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease. What now? I thought.
Every doctor I visited told me I needed to start taking levothyroxine. Levothyroxine is a synthetic hormone used to replace T4 when the thyroid isn’t producing enough of it.
They all said I would need to take it forever. I remember thinking to myself: How? Why? No one in my family had this autoimmune disease. Then darker thoughts crept in: Will I develop other autoimmune diseases, like diabetes? Some doctors said yes.
I knew I had to find a solution.
The first time I did blood work—on October 30, 2024—I found out that my TSH level was 14.2 and T4 was 1.0. I immediately thought there must be a mistake and decided to double-check. I repeated the blood work on November 5, 2024, and the results showed: TSH 9.32, T4 1.0, T3 3.25, Anti-TG 486, and Anti-TPO 16.7.
I didn’t understand how, in less than 10 days, my TSH had dropped by 4 points. All I knew was that Hashimoto’s—an autoimmune thyroid disease—was confirmed because my antibody levels were too high.
