A short while ago I posted about feeling as though my internal battery had just grown old: it took longer to charge, was never fully charging, and drained away quickly.

Then last week I woke up one morning completely exhausted. Wiped out tired. Sat up in bed and thought about laying right back down again, despite having slept in an hour and a half.

I also had mild cold symptoms – a slightly runny nose and a vaguely sore throat. I figured there was a good chance that I was coming down with something.

However, I seemed to be getting better during the course of the day. Was fine by the next day. That’s when it finally occurred to me that this might have been a very mild exhaustion cold.

Uh oh.

You see, from the time I was 28 until I was 45, I regularly had exhaustion colds. They lasted longer than this one, the symptoms were more severe. I’d spend 2-3 days sleeping, with very mild cold symptoms.

Thyroid medication finally “cured” my exhaustion colds. One of the symptoms of not having enough of the right thyroid hormones is being tired. I figured I just drove myself into the ground on a regular enough basis that instead of being tired all the time, I just went until I hit the wall, hard.

I went and checked the calendar where I keep track of these sorts of things. Seven weeks ago I had a similar event. I wasn’t sure if it was an exhaustion cold or not, but in my notes I told myself to be on the look out for a second occurrence.

Well, crap.

There’s a good chance that my current thyroid medication isn’t doing the job.

The good news is that I was forced to change thyroid medications last year. The brand I was using was out of stock. Then there was a world-wide shortage of desiccated pig thyroid. I had to switch to a plant-based thyroid medication, from a compounding pharmacy. I figured it was doing the job, and hadn’t really thought about it.

Until now.

Fortunately, my original thyroid medication is back in stock. I started taking it this week. (One of the reasons why it’s difficult for me to take a standard thyroid medication is because I’m allergic to corn, and corn starch is in almost every pill you ever take. The medication I take is one of the few without corn starch.)

My hope is that my general, overall tiredness has been caused my a thyroid imbalance. It would be kind of awesome to get a full charge on this old battery of mine. I have a weekly reminder in my calendar for the next five weeks to pay attention to my energy levels, to see if they improve.

ION, I haven’t been on the internet much these last few days due to life and such. Should have more time today and tomorrow, though. So I apologize to all those people to whom I owe email.

Tell me what you’re looking forward to this weekend. We have the Seattle writer’s lunch up in Bothell for anyone who wants to come and talk business for a couple of hours…