The lady at left is my paternal grandmother, sometime in the late 1920s. If you look closely, you can see an asymmetry in her eyes and a goiter, although I think she's darn cute, and my grandfather certainly thought she was a dish!When she was 17 and working as a hired girl, a guest at her employer's house, a physician, noticed a tremor as she served supper and did dishes, and then told her that she had a goiter. Untreated, she told me, her problem got worse after each baby, until she could hardly speak or function. She finally had a thyroidectomy sometime in the late 1940s. I remember the fine white necklace of a scar describing an arc above her collarbone.
Did she have Graves' disease? I'm not sure. But she just died, age 100, so it hardly held her back!
Thyroid trouble tends to run in families, and it makes no difference what form it takes. In their seventies, my mother and her sister have become hypothyroid. In another branch of the family, several members in all generations suffered from thyroid problems. Thyroid problems seem to have converged on me, genetically speaking.
2 comments:
Hi- It's Kelly here and I wanted to check to see how you are feeling. How are your eyes?
Also, I was looking at the picture of your grandmother and you are right, if you look closely you can see the asymmetry in her eyes. What's the story on that? Did her eyes ever worse that you know of? Did she talk about that? I'm interested in hearing stories about the eyes that are not awful.
I hope you are doing well!
Take care,
Kelly
Hi Kelly,
Grandma never had the bulging eyes and may not have had Graves'. Judging on what she told me, it was probably Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which can have periods of hyperthyroidism ("Hashitoxicosis"). While the congestive, bulging eyes can happen with Hashimoto's, it's more common to just get puffy eyes from it.
When I had the odd "pinkeye" in 1993-94, it felt like dry, puffy eyes that went away in 3-4 months. If it was indeed GO then, it was not bad at all. But if it was really GO, then here I am, proof you can get it twice. Wish I knew.
My eyes are pretty crappy right now! Recent photos make me look like Popeye. Am hoping that it'll go away, but one never knows.
Most cases of GO are not all that bad--mine is a little worse, probably because I have a lot of blocking and stimulating antibodies battling each other.
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