The Right Thing To Do

Usually, when I write blog posts, I keep it very tongue in cheek and, I hope, humourous-melodramatic. This one has refused to be written any way except from the heart, and, what's more, has ended up with the exact opposite of the point I thought I was trying to make.

So bear with me. Here's the first attempt at this post:-

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A few years ago I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, shortly after we made the decision to try for a baby (after six years of my desperately wanting to). Trying to get pregnant was immediately forbidden, and I was referred to a specialist.

I ignored the prompts of my monthly blood tests, avoided a doctor's appointment, and went to RWA National in NYC in 2003. Those were my last happy memories of 2003 - by August that year my memory was shot to hell, and I probably wouldn't have wanted to remember how I felt anyway.

The specialist, catching up with me when I got back from NYC, presented me with two choices. One, to continue taking drugs to suppress the thyroid gland, but not permanently affect it, expecting the thyroid to self-correct in time. This was the lowest risk option, and the least disruptive to my life. Two, to have radio-iodine treatment that would mean several weeks off work, at least a week of little or no human contact (no hugs allowed!) and several months of setting off airport radiation detectors, should I wish to fly. Option two also included the possibility of turning my thyroid to too low a setting, so to speak, and it was likely I would afterward be on medication for the rest of my life.

I simplify, but you don't need a medical essay.

The point is that Option One was the Right Thing To Do. It was gentler, and relied on nature taking its course. BUT - you knew there was a but, right? - at this stage, every month without a pregnancy was like being beaten with big sticks labelled "Failure", "Freak" and "Eternal Unhappiness". And with Option One, they were talking about months, even years to a resolution. Option Two? Four to six months. Max.

But I sucked it up, broke my heart on a daily basis, and got on with things as best I could, waiting out that Right treatment. Because sometimes the hard thing to do is still the Right Thing To Do.

I feel a bit like that right now. I'm not writing at the moment, and it's a conscious decision. Work is busy, I'm writing a paper for my MA, and we've been concetrating on home improvements. Pioritising writing over that is downright crazy, and a hiding to nothing. But I WANT to be writing, it nags at my like mild toothache, like a craving for something you can't have.

But Not Writing is still the Right Thing To Do.
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That was where I was going with this post the first time I wrote it. Making the point that sometimes it's hard to do The Right Thing, but it's still necessary.

But then a little voice said, "um, but you don't WANT to do the right thing. You didn't then and you don't now."

And that's really true. After about eight months of that Right Thing To Do treatment, and no improvement, I broke down (literally! Cue hysterics in the doctor's office...) and demanded the riskier, quicker treatment. Because damn the sensible decision, I wanted what my heart demanded.

And it worked. It worked beautifully. It not only cured my hyperthyroidism, but it didn't give me HYPOthyroidism, either. I'm not on medication and my thyroxin level has been text-book perfect ever since. The recovery was almost miraculous, and I'm approaching the second anniversary of being given the green light for trying for a baby again.

(No success yet, but that's another story, and we're coping, honest.)

So I'm in a bit of a pickle. I intended to write this, "Sometimes you have to do the Right Thing even if it hurts" post, and I've ended up with the unavoidable conclusion that my point today is, "Screw the Right Thing. Follow your heart."

Which means, I'm a writer. I have to write.

Which is downright scary. I have no idea how to do this.

Wish me luck.