Vol. 32 of Thursday Third Things
How to Take Care of Yourself
Weird recommendations:
I don’t have much for y’all to read or watch or check out this week, mostly because I’ve added many lovely activities to my life and packed in one million doctors’ appointments for the one million things my body is doing wrong. All of that is below!
Take Horseback Riding Lessons
Like so many little girls, I absolutely LOVED horses as a kid (also dinosaurs, beanie babies, and tiny plastic animals). We went to Chincoteague a couple of times when I was growing up and saw the wild ponies, which delighted me. For birthdays and vacations, I almost always requested horseback riding as an activity. I never formally took riding lessons, but always wished I could have. Then I became an adult and moved to cities and otherwise not horsey places and figured I’d missed my chance. Oh well.
Earlier this winter some friends and I were talking about how we’d survive the apocalypse if it were to happen in our lifetime. (For the record, I said I would just lay down and die because I simply WILL NOT be pulling out a rotting tooth with my bare hands and a pair of pliers. OBVIOUSLY.) And that got us all pondering what our skills in an apocalypse would be. To which I asked, “How important do you think writing poems about birds will be when the world is ending?” And everyone collectively agreed it was not likely very important and that perhaps I could use some better end-of-world skills.
That’s when I started thinking about horses again. Horse skills would be very useful in the apocalypse, right? But the more I looked into it, the more I thought they might also be useful skills right now. A horse can hear a human’s heartbeat from four feet away and they will synchronize their heartbeats with humans and horses around them to better sense danger and stay alert. Which means if you approach a horse in a state of panic and chaos, that horse will match your energy and you are unlikely to have a good time riding that buddy. I thought maybe horses could teach me a thing or two about managing anxiety and staying in the present moment.
So I found horseback riding lessons just a few minutes down the road from my house and took my first lesson last week. I am riding an older mare named Horse (yes, really), who is afraid of plastic buckets and has to wear horse ski goggles when we ride because the sun bugs her eyes. And I love her.
In my first lesson, I just learned how to brush her, clean her hooves, put on her bridle and saddle, and do one slow walk around the barn. At the very end of our gentle ride, a woman pulled a big trashcan along the road (AKA a GIANT plastic bucket) and I felt Horse tense up, then bolt sideways, completely unconcerned that I was on top of her and had no idea what to do.
So I just leaned in and got control of her head and brought my own heart rate down from the jolt and together we overcame the plastic bucket and rode back into the barn with something like grace. Then I gave her lots of treats and fed her dinner and all was well.
I know that sounds incredibly silly and probably stupid, but I immediately understood why people (especially women) get really into horses. There’s something spiritual happening there. I wanted to hang out with Horse all night and see how she took in the world and be there with her while she did it. I don’t know how else to explain it.
So the recommendation is: If there is something you wanted to do as a child and have convinced yourself you’ve outgrown it, maybe go see if there are some lessons nearby and do that thing as an adult and just see what happens.
Learn To Dive
I have joked with friends that I am probably the most persuadable person on the planet. All you have to do is nudge me two or three times to try something new or ride the extra hard line and I’ll likely do it.
A few winters ago, my friend Lauren mentioned that she was scuba diving and that I should learn and come with her. I laughed. “Nope! I do too many things as it is and I’m terrified of running out of air underwater,” I said to her. She dropped it, left for a diving trip in Cozumel, and then we didn’t talk about it again for a few years.
But when I caught up with her in Pennsylvania last month, she mentioned again how amazing scuba diving was, how much she thought I’d like it, and all the places we could go together if I learned. That was nudge number two, which meant within a few weeks of getting back to Colorado, I was signed up for my online PADI course and began prepping for my pool dives and booking my hotel for my first open water dive in Utah.
I’m halfway through the online portion of the course (I haven’t even put my body in the water yet) and I’m already enamored. Buoyancy is fascinating! So is pressure! Your body can do amazing things and air does amazing things and all you have to do is put a little water on top of yourself to discover it. Also, once again, this is an activity where you must be very conscious of your breathing, your heart rate, and your ability to be present. What a strong lesson.
So recommendation number two is: Learn to scuba dive! (And also let good people persuade you more often.)
Take Care of Your Body
Last year I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease — an autoimmune disorder that causes your body to attack its own thyroid. Which isn’t great because your thyroid does a lot of important things like regulate your metabolism, control blood pressure, regulate the sodium pumps between your cells, take care of your mucus membranes, AND MORE.
The good news is I wasn’t feeling THAT bad when I got diagnosed, and taking just a little bit of thyroid medication every day, plus extra vitamins (D, B12, and magnesium specifically), meant I was feeling REALLY great after about six months of treatment. My immune system works so much better now, my sleep is better, and my energy and recovery time are better.
However, it’s also affecting more of my life than I realized which some days makes me feel a little sorry for myself and a little mad that my body seems to be rebelling. For example, I have a lot of trouble wearing contacts because my eyes seem to dry out within an hour of putting the contacts in. I went to my optometrist last week and he said “Oh, yeah, well that’s pretty common with Hashimoto’s. I’m surprised you can wear contacts at all.” The best advice he had was to use lubricating eye drops — which I do already — and otherwise, there was no solution as long as my body continued to attack my thyroid.
I also decided it was time to see a periodontist for some receding gums I’ve been struggling with for the last, oh, decade, and the doctor told me, “Well, you’ve also got lichen planus (an autoimmune disorder of the gums) which is pretty common for Hashimoto’s patients. You’re going to struggle with that for the rest of your life.” And with that, he handed me an armful of minty products to wipe all over my gums several times a day as well as a bill for $7,000 to fix the SEVEN teeth with receding gums that will take not one but THREE surgeries to fix over the next couple of years.
Then I topped that week off with a round of bloodwork from my PCP this morning in which we confirmed that on top of Hashimoto’s, I also have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) which is causing insulin resistance and is likely going to require MORE medication to control as well as a glucose monitor and diet change. And by the way, Hashimoto’s and PCOS are VERY commonly linked diseases.
Which puts me in a very strange and tender place in which I am not actively sick, but I also have many things not working right in my body that COULD make me very sick and injured if I don’t start addressing them now while I’m still (fairly) young.
Unfortunately, medication can help avoid the worst of the symptoms, but none of the medications I’ve been prescribed can treat the actual problem of my immune system being funky.
Which leads me to recommendation three: Find a holistic health system that works for YOU.
In addition to having a really phenomenal doctor who is very meticulous with my bloodwork, I’ve also recently found a gym that does whole body health — everything from workouts to nutrition, to physical therapy, to emotional/spiritual stuff — and man, it just feels good to know someone is checking in with me and my health every week to see what’s going on in my lil body. My coach is familiar with the diseases I’m working with and is offering lots of ways to improve my overall health and tackle this ol’ immune system at the ground level.
I’m feeling annoyed that Hashimoto’s causes so many problems, but I’m also feeling excited to find new ways to care for myself. Two things can be true.