Thyroid Eye Disease and Working 2 Jobs

Life has been pretty busy lately. I currently work 2 jobs and just recently reduced hours on my second job. I started thinking about how burnt out I felt, and how I felt like I did not have enough time to do anything. It made me realize that I have been neglecting myself a little bit or not paying attention to things I would have normally paid attention to in the past, had I not been so busy.

Monitoring my health conditions

When you have thyroid eye disease (TED) and a thyroid disease, it is something you monitor your whole life. It is something you have to pay attention to. Since I have Graves’ Disease, I am on medication for my whole life, and will have to get blood work, and check in with my endocrinologist. It is  really important to monitor how I feel and if I feel a little off, I have to get in touch with my doctor to get some blood drawn. From there, my medication dose will either stay the same, increase or decrease. There are so many ways it could go.

Usually, if I am feeling more tired than normal, I know that something is up. The problem is, being so busy, I was not paying attention to any changes in my behavior. I was not aware of how my body was acting. This is hard to gage sometimes, too, because if you are a busy person then you think well, I am tired because I am so busy. When you have any type of thyroid issue and you are tired - my best advice is to get it checked out.

Recognizing how working 2 jobs with TED and Graves made me feel

I realized that I was not on top of how I was feeling like I used to be. It is like I did not have any time to think of anything else besides work. I knew I had to change something, so I reduced my hours at my second job, and I definitely think it was the right thing to do. It is so important to look out for yourself and pay attention to how you are feeling. Who else is going to? Who else is going to know how you feel except for you? I think it comes back to being your own advocate which I have also talked a lot about.

If you do not pay attention to how you are feeling and then do something about it, what is really going to change? It can be really hard to put yourself first, but I knew that in order to give myself and my body the attention is deserved I had to change something, or I had to not be so busy all the time. That is something I feel like I’ve talked about a lot in my articles, too. The feeling of always having to be doing something and then becoming so into what you are doing that you forget about everything else. 

It is always important to pay attention to yourself and put yourself first when it comes to your health, but it is especially important when you have a diagnosed disease, like TED, or a thyroid condition, that needs continual monitoring.

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