The First Day of Vacation

Today feels like the first day of vacation! I finished the tomato sauce yesterday—for a grand total of 93 quarts—and for the first time in months, I don’t have a laundry list of tasks that NEED to be accomplished before I fall into bed at night. Whew.

I do have an apron order to fill. I worked on that a bit yesterday morning while waiting for tomatoes to cook down. It’s a modified version of this one:

The customer asked for a longer version, which meant re-drafting the pattern. I pulled out a length of some clearance fabric so I could make up a prototype and test the changes. I’ll put that together today, and if it meets with approval, I’ll make the actual apron.

I’m also halfway through a batch of masks for DSIL and his dad and brother, all of whom are medical professionals. They liked the gray Kona ones with nose wires that I made for DSIL, so I am knocking out about three dozen.

The thought of being able to sew all day is wonderful. I’ve also been collecting supplies for the quilting class that Tera and I are taking next month.

We seem to have gotten through the worst of the early freeze. Yesterday, the high got up to 34 and it felt downright balmy. And next week is supposed to be warmer than normal.

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I had a phone visit with my naturopath yesterday. He said all of my bloodwork looked great.

My naturopath is a brilliant guy, but I appreciate him most because he is willing to think (and treat) outside the box. We sometimes joke that I am my own clinical trial. I started seeing him 15 years ago out of desperation, but that turned out to be one of the best moves I ever made. When I hit 40, I developed all sorts of problems. I went to my doctor and said, “I am exhausted, my hair is falling out, my skin is dry, I am gaining weight” (which had never been a problem), and she said, “Oh, you’re just eating too much and not exercising enough.” We went back and forth like that several months. She even offered to put me on antidepressants to treat my “body image” issue. I finally got her to check my thyroid levels. She called and told me they were normal and very reluctantly said she would refer me to an endocrinologist if that was what I wanted. I decided that I would see what this naturopath said, instead, so I made an appointment with him.

He tested everything. Lo and behold, not only was I hypothyroid, I was fairly severely hypothyroid. Looking back, I honestly don’t know how I managed to function during that time. I went to see my original doctor and told her what I had done. She whipped out my thyroid test and said, “This was normal!” I looked at the test results. My active thyroid hormone level was 0.1 above the bottom of the range. When I pointed that out, she did have the grace to look sheepish and apologize. She acknowledged that “in range” did not necessarily mean “normal.”

I never went back to her. My naturopath put me on thyroid replacement, which immediately made me feel better. (Montana law allows naturopaths to write prescriptions and order labwork.) We tweaked a few other things and he helped me investigate the MTHFR issue. Over the past couple of years, I have been able to cut way back on my thyroid medication, too, which flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Doctors will tell you that once you go on thyroid replacement, you are on it for life because your own thyroid stops making hormone. Healing my thyroid was not my goal, but somehow I managed to do it anyway. (I think cleaning up my diet had a lot to do with that.) I went from taking thyroid hormone every day to taking a tiny dose 2-3 times a week.

Now I just check in with my naturopath twice a year unless I have problems. He blessed my plans to start experimenting with some intermittent fasting. I accidentally fell into that pattern this past summer—I tend to eat most from about 6-noon, and sometimes forego dinner altogether because I am just not that hungry. We’ll see what happens.