Hi Reader,

• Subject: I fell asleep at a red light with my kids in the back
  ​Preview: I still don't know how long I was out for.
• Subject: I looked exactly the same. I wasn't.
  ​Preview: Nobody around me had any idea what was happening.

THE LIGHT WAS RED

My daughter was in her car seat behind me, chattering about something from nursery that day. I was half listening, half just trying to keep my eyes open. Somewhere between one sentence of hers and the next, they closed.

I woke up to a horn behind me. The light had gone green. I don't know how long I was out for. Long enough that a stranger felt the need to lean on their horn. Long enough that it still crosses my mind more than I'd like.

THAT WAS JUST WHAT THOSE YEARS LOOKED LIKE

Some mornings I would stand at the bottom of the stairs in my own house and have to talk myself into climbing them, one at a time, hand on the banister the whole way up, like I was eighty rather than in my thirties with two small kids.

I was working as a freelance designer at the time. Clients would send over a brief and I would sit there staring at the screen, unable to remember how I usually solved this exact kind of problem. Work I had done a hundred times over suddenly felt like it was written in a language I used to speak fluently and had somehow forgotten overnight.

THE PART ALMOST NOBODY COULD SEE

I still got up. I still did the school run. I still put on a bit of makeup most mornings, still sorted my hair out before I left the house. From the outside, I looked exactly like myself.

So nobody around me had any reason to think something was wrong. My friends saw the same person they'd always known. My clients saw deadlines met, even if I had no idea afterwards how I'd managed it. Even my own husband would ask if I was okay and I'd say I was just tired, because "I think my body might be failing me" isn't really something you know how to say out loud yet.

Underneath all of that, I was falling asleep at traffic lights with my children in the car.

EVERY TEST CAME BACK NORMAL

I went to my doctor. More than once. I tried to explain how I felt, and it was never quite right, because tired doesn't really cover it. It was more like my whole body had been unplugged from something and nobody had told me. Every test came back normal. Every appointment ended the same way. Maybe you just need more sleep. Maybe it's stress. Maybe it's just what having young kids does to you.

I STOPPED TRYING TO EXPLAIN IT

After enough of those conversations, I stopped trying to explain it properly. It's hard to keep insisting something is wrong when every test says you're fine and everyone around you quietly agrees with the test instead of with you. So I got quieter about it. I just tried to get through each day and told myself I'd feel more like me again once the kids were a bit older, once work calmed down, once whatever excuse felt true that week.

THE SCAN THAT COULDN'T BE ARGUED WITH

It took years like that. Years of feeling like a slightly worse version of myself and having no proof to back it up. Then, eventually, a scan found something that couldn't be argued with. Not tiredness. Not stress. Cancer, in my thyroid.

I won't pretend that was a good day, because it wasn't. But somewhere in the middle of the worst news I had ever been given, there was a strange kind of relief sitting right next to the fear. For the first time, somebody could point at an image and say, there. That's real. That's not you being lazy, or dramatic, or not coping with motherhood the way you should be.

EVERY PIECE OF IT, GONE IN ONE AFTERNOON

Not long after, my thyroid was removed completely. Every piece of it, gone in one afternoon. My body went from making some of its own thyroid hormone to making none at all. Every bit I need now comes from a small tablet, every single morning, for the rest of my life.

NOT MANAGED. ACTUALLY BACK.

The exhaustion didn't disappear on its own the day of that surgery. It took getting my medication properly optimised, and then going further than that. I changed how I ate. I changed how I moved, gently, without a gym and without ever counting a calorie. None of it came from a textbook. I researched every piece of it myself, because nobody handed me an instruction manual for any of this. Now, years later, I have more energy than I had in the decade before my diagnosis. Not managed. Not maintained. Actually back.

WHAT STAYED WITH ME LONGEST

What stayed with me longest wasn't the surgery, though. It was those earlier years. I think about how long I spent doubting myself before anyone believed me, and I think about how many people are living that exact same year right now, quietly, behind a face that still looks completely fine to everyone around them.

You don't need a thyroid cancer diagnosis for this to be true for you.

You don't need a surgery or a scan for your version of this to be real. If you've ever looked completely fine on the outside while quietly falling asleep in a car park, or losing your train of thought mid-sentence, or standing at the bottom of your own stairs, you already know exactly what I'm describing.

WHY THIS SPACE EXISTS

This is exactly why the Hypothyroid Recovery Hub exists.

Not only for the information, though there's plenty of that inside. Mostly for the part that's much harder to find anywhere else. People who already understand this, without you having to explain it first.

If that sounds like something you need right now, you can start for free.

👉 LOOK INSIDE​

Come tell your version of this story.

Someone inside is waiting to say, "me too!!"

P.S. If you want to see exactly what I mean about looking fine while feeling like you're falling apart underneath, scroll back up to those four images. I think you'll recognise more than one of them. 😔

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