For me a "good day" or a "bad" day is defined most often by my physical health and how few crisis arose. On “good days” I get up early, get in a 15-20 minute quiet time before everyone is up, I am able to cook, do a little cleaning, keep the kids’ homeschooling going, check email, do a little internet browsing, take a walk outside, read stories to the children, get in a little sewing, and relax in the evening watching a tv episode with my hubby. If I’m really lucky, I’ll get a few hours in working on a language project, like the grammar book I have been editing.
But today was not one of those days. Yesterday I forgot to take my thyroid hormone supplement, and didn’t remember till this morning. I have taken a supplement since four years ago when I had a partial thyroidectomy due to three pre-cancerous tumors my doctor found. Whenever I don’t take my supplement, I usually pay for it the next day. Such was the case today. I slept in and didn’t have the energy to get up in time to have quiet time. I got through breakfast and even read the kids a few stories, but then school started. Now for me on a “bad” day, when my thyroid hormone levels are not where they should be, my brain shuts down. If that happens at the same time as any crisis, I’m in trouble. Multi-tasking demands are the first thing to trigger it. It is almost like a switch goes off. Once I am in the middle of one thing, and another thing presents itself, I get confused, forgetful, and suddenly cannot process anything, even the first thing I was doing. That is what happened today. I was doing school with my 6-year-old, when I remembered I needed to make a phone call. While making the phone call, listening to it ring on the other end, my 11-year-old comes to me with a question about how to attach pictures to an email to his friends for an assignment he is writing for school. I look at the clock and realize that it was getting close to lunch time and I hadn’t even begun to think about what to fix for lunch. Suddenly realizing that four things were now presenting themselves which only I could do, I felt tired, weak, confused, and needed to lay down. I did so, realizing that if I didn’t get my “act together”, no one would eat.
This is the interesting dilemma I am sure many a mother faces on a “hectic” day. For me, it is complicated by my hypothyroidism. Some days it just seems that if I can’t keep it all together, keep everything organized, keep everything running smoothely, everything will cease to function, things will come screeching to a halt, everyone will starve to death. I am thankful for my older kids who can help out. So I asked my kids to stop school and, one step at a time, I walked them through turning our leftover cream-of-wheat from breakfast into corn fritters, and making the left-over bread into toast so they could eat something for lunch. I quietly lay down in bed, drank some “triple greens” (which I have found to be brain food), and let my brain recover a little and get past the tangled “knot” in my brain so I could think clearly again.
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