Iowa is celebrating hometown boy Kurt Warner's surprising trip to the SuperBowl. While he is not expected to win, the local papers all do stories about Kurt's earlier life in eastern Iowa and working at Hy-Vee stocking the shelves.
It's the stuff dreams are made of.
Given our flood recovery problems we need something someone to celebrate like Kurt Warner.
For me, it is remembering SuperBowl 2002 (Kurt's first appearance) that is more on my mind. I spent the day at the emergency room at St. Luke's and later transferred to the University hospital in Iowa City.
At first they thought I was having a heart attack. Then they confirmed that I hadn't but that something was very wrong. After a couple of days of tests they found that my thyroid had zero output... and had had zero output for a long, long time.
I had all the classic symptoms:
- I slept for ten hours a day and woke up tired.- My fingernails were brittle and broke off easily- My resting heart rate dropped below 60 (which is normal for someone in great shape... I was NOT in great shape)- My tongue was larger and I often sounded like I was drunk in the middle of the day (and while I do like to drink, I've never been a daytime drinker!)- I generally felt like crap each and every day
The only reason it hadn't been caught before was that I didn't have tell-tale symptom: weight gain. It's hard to gain weight when one doesn't eat.
So for the rest of my life I will take synthroid. On this trip back I've been really bad at taking my synthroid. Last week I realized how lousy I felt and that I had only taken my thyroid pill once in two weeks.
Then I remembered that that was how I felt every day... for years. It boggles my mind to consider how much productivity and LIFE I lost during those years.
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