I had the craving to come back to doing this.
This blog has been active (by loose definition) since 2003. That's nearly 13 years! And time marches on, as the saying goes.
Let me quickly bring any readers out there up-to-speed.
In November 2012, I started graduate school, studying Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. The university I studied with is Lancaster University in the Linguistics and English department.
Although my degree was an MATESOL, it was heavily a degree in applied linguistics. Moreso than degrees offered elsewhere. It was extremely intense and because it was a British university, the grading system (as well as every other system) was completely different from what I was used to. For example, the American marking (grading) system is more-or-less a 59-100 system which is roughly divided into blocks of 10. So... < 59 [ fail ] 60-69 [ pass ] 70-79
[ average] 80-89 [ above average] 90-100 [ well above average / excellent ]
In the system I was studying in... < 50 [ fail ] 51-60 [ pass ] 61-70
[ average ] 71-79 [ above average ] 80 + [ well above average ] 90 +
[ unheard of / genius level ] . It is extremely rare for ANYONE (and I mean, even the most gifted, smartest, hard-working individual) to receive a mark 80+ and you'd pretty much have to be Einstein to receive anything as high as 90+. So, it's really hard. I don't think most American students can even fathom the harsh grading in this system.
I wrote 7, 6,000-word research essays in a span of about 12 months. The highest mark I got was a 79 on a paper for something called Cognitive Grammar which takes the concepts of Cognitive and Psychological Science (what we know about the brain in the laboratory) and applies this to the systems of grammar. Probably my favorite class. I would have had higher marks because the paper really was kind of may 'magnum opus' except that I was so stressed and tired from researching and writing non-stop for 90 days straight (I had 3, 6,000-word papers due in a span of 3 months--all while working full-time, doing another part-time working gig and taking care of my kids) that I didn't carefully edit the thing--and I had changed some formatting and sentences got jumbled and stuff. The professor really wanted to give me higher marks but had to keep to the rubric and yeah, I just should have edited it better--it was all technical difficulties sort of mistakes.
Anyway, so, this is really, really tough academic program. In fact, in 2014, Lancaster's Linguistics department was ranked number 2 in the world for academics! And they grade you in an incredibly harsh manner. It's very much a graduate course. So, that kept me super busy.
I had started my research project for my dissertation (thesis) in January/February 2014 and had done all my data collection by June...which was about a week after I found out I was unexpectedly pregnant with our third child. I had a cyst on one of my ovaries that was making me especially sick and giving me pain and then I got pretty severe nausea and exhaustion for the first three months. I had to delay my submission deadline for the paper.
[ average] 80-89 [ above average] 90-100 [ well above average / excellent ]
In the system I was studying in... < 50 [ fail ] 51-60 [ pass ] 61-70
[ average ] 71-79 [ above average ] 80 + [ well above average ] 90 +
[ unheard of / genius level ] . It is extremely rare for ANYONE (and I mean, even the most gifted, smartest, hard-working individual) to receive a mark 80+ and you'd pretty much have to be Einstein to receive anything as high as 90+. So, it's really hard. I don't think most American students can even fathom the harsh grading in this system.
I wrote 7, 6,000-word research essays in a span of about 12 months. The highest mark I got was a 79 on a paper for something called Cognitive Grammar which takes the concepts of Cognitive and Psychological Science (what we know about the brain in the laboratory) and applies this to the systems of grammar. Probably my favorite class. I would have had higher marks because the paper really was kind of may 'magnum opus' except that I was so stressed and tired from researching and writing non-stop for 90 days straight (I had 3, 6,000-word papers due in a span of 3 months--all while working full-time, doing another part-time working gig and taking care of my kids) that I didn't carefully edit the thing--and I had changed some formatting and sentences got jumbled and stuff. The professor really wanted to give me higher marks but had to keep to the rubric and yeah, I just should have edited it better--it was all technical difficulties sort of mistakes.
Anyway, so, this is really, really tough academic program. In fact, in 2014, Lancaster's Linguistics department was ranked number 2 in the world for academics! And they grade you in an incredibly harsh manner. It's very much a graduate course. So, that kept me super busy.
I had started my research project for my dissertation (thesis) in January/February 2014 and had done all my data collection by June...which was about a week after I found out I was unexpectedly pregnant with our third child. I had a cyst on one of my ovaries that was making me especially sick and giving me pain and then I got pretty severe nausea and exhaustion for the first three months. I had to delay my submission deadline for the paper.
I decided to take the kids back to the States for a few weeks in the summer--hoping it would help my health/sanity. It was a good but stressful trip as I was on my own with both of them and pregnant as well and not feeling too good. My daughter threw up for 6 hours on part of the flight. She was literally filling up barf bag after barf bag which we were there using to fill up another huge plastic bag. Still amazes me how much a tiny kid's body can produce in puke. But, we eventually made it 'back home' in one piece. Had a pretty good visit but then the day before we were meant to fly back, my daughter had a severe asthma attack. We missed our flight the next day and she was diagnosed with pneumonia and really bad asthma. So, yeah, it became a tiring flight back as we had to stay over in Seattle and with having to go to a hotel, only got a few hours' sleep.
Upon arriving back 'home' I had to start working on my research again...but my body started acting weird. And that weirdness turned into me not being able to sleep well. I couldn't sleep because I was having symptoms of what one would call a 'panic attack' that would wake me in the middle of the night. The best way to describe it is like someone was holding my head under water and I couldn't breathe and I would wake up, covered in sweat, extremely hot, heart racing, vibrating and shaking. This would happen just as my body was drifting into deeper sleep--over and over and over again--every night. This had also happened when I was pregnant with my first son--started happening--out of the blue--around my 6th month of pregnancy. But with this past pregnancy it hit before I was even 5 months pregnant.
It was such a long road. It took a long time to get any help or relief. In between the time when I started having sleep problems, my daughter was bitten by a pit viper (snake) and hospitalized for a week. I sat by her bedside on a hard plastic chair overnight and that didn't help my sleep situation.
Upon arriving back 'home' I had to start working on my research again...but my body started acting weird. And that weirdness turned into me not being able to sleep well. I couldn't sleep because I was having symptoms of what one would call a 'panic attack' that would wake me in the middle of the night. The best way to describe it is like someone was holding my head under water and I couldn't breathe and I would wake up, covered in sweat, extremely hot, heart racing, vibrating and shaking. This would happen just as my body was drifting into deeper sleep--over and over and over again--every night. This had also happened when I was pregnant with my first son--started happening--out of the blue--around my 6th month of pregnancy. But with this past pregnancy it hit before I was even 5 months pregnant.
It was such a long road. It took a long time to get any help or relief. In between the time when I started having sleep problems, my daughter was bitten by a pit viper (snake) and hospitalized for a week. I sat by her bedside on a hard plastic chair overnight and that didn't help my sleep situation.
I was referred to various doctors at the hospital and then in late September, I just stopped sleeping altogether--for 4 days straight I didn't sleep a wink--not one moment. I was taken to the emergency room and that resulted in a week-long hospitalization to try to figure out what was going on with me. They tested everything. It came back that my thyroid was not doing well. My TSH showed I had hyperthyroidism. I guess I should have been able to tell because my hair was falling out, literally by the handful. However, they retested my blood about 3 days later and it was 'within range' so they declared me 'cured' even though I continued to have symptoms. They put me on this anti-depressant and that even though I had no symptoms of depression except feeling extremely exhausted because I WAS NOT SLEEPING. They also did not test my thyroid antibodies and did not followup properly with my thyroid tests. I was also extremely anemic.
Eventually, the 'cure' was a nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic called zopiclone. Zopiclone is the 'real' version of 'Lunesta'...Lunesta is a weaker version of Zopiclone. In the States, Zopiclone is a controlled substance. But, over here, it's what they prescribe. It worked. It's also very addictive and can be habit-forming even after 1 week. I tried to take only 1/4 of a tablet but it didn't work at that amount so I took 1/2 tablet (half-dose). It didn't make everything 'all better' but it meant that I slept. I was on that from mid-October to the beginning of January. Oh, that time....
I developed hemorrhoids from hell. They were so bad they required surgery. So, at the end of December, when I was about 35 weeks pregnant, I had surgery. They shot my butt up with a bunch of novacaine--which you can imagine wasn't very pleasant. Then they cut off those bits and cauterized them. Then, they refused to give me any real pain medication because I was pregnant. They only gave me regular-strength Tylenol (Panadol). Within 15 minutes the pain hit me so hard that I nearly passed out. I couldn't walk and just laid on the sofa in the waiting room. This was how I spent my New Year's Eve. My husband and my two kids had to come rescue me by taxi and get me home. The next day, New Year's Day, the terrible cough I had had (which had made the hemorrhoids worse) resulted in me not being able to breathe. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance on the January 2nd in the early morning with an oxygen mask on my face. That whole ordeal ended with me being in the hospital for another 3-4 days with pneumonia. I was so extremely anemic that I really could barely move. They put me on massive amounts of antibiotics and an inhaler which I had to take every 4 hours.
That's the first time I went off of the Zopiclone. I hallucinated and shivered and shook for about 10 days. It was really, really awful. Then, my body got over it and I was okay....for about three weeks...at which, I suddenly stopped sleeping again. So, I had to go back on the Zopiclone, much to my dismay, and double the dose I had been taking (to the regular dose, instead of half). I made it another 2 weeks and gave birth to the baby early on the morning of February 4th, two days after his due date.
For about 6-8 weeks the baby had withdrawal symptoms from the meds and would cry and cry like he was in pain. I went through another withdrawal period of about 5 days where it was really hard. The crazy levels of anxiety I felt in my body were almost too much for me to bear. Under the supervision of my doctor, I took some St. John's wort tincture to help manage the withdrawal anxiety and all the other nasty side-effects. It did help a lot but it gave me a bit of a headache.
Eventually, the 'cure' was a nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic called zopiclone. Zopiclone is the 'real' version of 'Lunesta'...Lunesta is a weaker version of Zopiclone. In the States, Zopiclone is a controlled substance. But, over here, it's what they prescribe. It worked. It's also very addictive and can be habit-forming even after 1 week. I tried to take only 1/4 of a tablet but it didn't work at that amount so I took 1/2 tablet (half-dose). It didn't make everything 'all better' but it meant that I slept. I was on that from mid-October to the beginning of January. Oh, that time....
I developed hemorrhoids from hell. They were so bad they required surgery. So, at the end of December, when I was about 35 weeks pregnant, I had surgery. They shot my butt up with a bunch of novacaine--which you can imagine wasn't very pleasant. Then they cut off those bits and cauterized them. Then, they refused to give me any real pain medication because I was pregnant. They only gave me regular-strength Tylenol (Panadol). Within 15 minutes the pain hit me so hard that I nearly passed out. I couldn't walk and just laid on the sofa in the waiting room. This was how I spent my New Year's Eve. My husband and my two kids had to come rescue me by taxi and get me home. The next day, New Year's Day, the terrible cough I had had (which had made the hemorrhoids worse) resulted in me not being able to breathe. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance on the January 2nd in the early morning with an oxygen mask on my face. That whole ordeal ended with me being in the hospital for another 3-4 days with pneumonia. I was so extremely anemic that I really could barely move. They put me on massive amounts of antibiotics and an inhaler which I had to take every 4 hours.
That's the first time I went off of the Zopiclone. I hallucinated and shivered and shook for about 10 days. It was really, really awful. Then, my body got over it and I was okay....for about three weeks...at which, I suddenly stopped sleeping again. So, I had to go back on the Zopiclone, much to my dismay, and double the dose I had been taking (to the regular dose, instead of half). I made it another 2 weeks and gave birth to the baby early on the morning of February 4th, two days after his due date.
For about 6-8 weeks the baby had withdrawal symptoms from the meds and would cry and cry like he was in pain. I went through another withdrawal period of about 5 days where it was really hard. The crazy levels of anxiety I felt in my body were almost too much for me to bear. Under the supervision of my doctor, I took some St. John's wort tincture to help manage the withdrawal anxiety and all the other nasty side-effects. It did help a lot but it gave me a bit of a headache.
So, then, I started being able to sleep again. I had deferred my dissertation (thesis) back in September when it became clear that my health was in jeopardy.
In May, this year, my sister came to HK for about three weeks. We had a lot of fun together. She remarked that it looked like my hairline was receding. I didn't pay much attention to that.
At the beginning of June, I started seeing a new doctor who ran a full battery of blood tests. The initial tests showed signs of Hashimoto's thyroiditis which is an autoimmune disease in which one's body sees the thyroid as a 'foreign body' and attacks it with antibodies, causing inflammation which in turn causes the thyroid to go through phases of both hypo and hyper states.
I was seen by an expert endocrinologist afterward for more tests, including ultrasounds of my thyroid. They found nodules in my thyroid and their tests confirmed that I have Hashimoto's. They ruled out Grave's disease. I was advised to start taking some supplements but that I needed to wait another few months to see what my status was because I would have to be at least 6 months post-partum for them to make a more solid treatment plan for me.
Later, a photo that was taken around early-mid June surfaced that showed that I was indeed very hyper thyroid and losing a lot of hair--to the point where I was going bald.
I began working on my studies again, in earnest, in mid-June. With a lot of hours and support from my family. I was finally able to submit my dissertation, all 350+ pages of it on October 19th. So, so, so grateful to have that monkey off my back. I feel like I can finally live again!
I also got my most recent blood tests back from the lab which showed my antibodies were getting even more out of control and my TSH levels were 3 times the upper limit so my body had gone into an extremely hypo state.
So, right now, the plan is for me to go on some form of thyroid medication. The endocrinologist wants to prescribe synthetic thyroxine. I am researching and investigating other alternatives, such as dessicated thyroid (Armour or Erfa) as I've been in contact with some ladies in Hong Kong who were on the synthetic for years but found much more success on the dessicated thyroid.
But, the 'moral of the story' is...the problems with my pregnancy with both of my sons was totally due to thyroid problems. Most likely the issues I have are hereditary but pregnancy is often the 'spark that lights the fire' when it comes to thyroid issues because it puts stress on the body. So, yeah, I was having what is known as 'thyroid storms' caused by high levels of thyroid antibodies which inflamed my thyroid and caused me to have hyperthyroid symptoms while pregnant. I had a nice doctor but the public hospital system here in HK didn't do it's due diligence to fully investigate these issues. Thankfully, neither I nor the baby died and now I'm finally getting treatment.
So, where I'm at right now? First, so thankful and relieved to be done with my master's degree! I should know very soon whether or not I will be okayed to graduate in December. I am guessing everything is okay--or they would have told me otherwise. Next, I'm really enjoying spending time with my family. It's been really good. Just the little things mean a lot. I've felt like I was a prisoner in another country and have finally returned home. It's so precious. Additionally, I am looking forward to 'having a life.' One upcoming thing is that I plan to start working out at a weight gym in November. It's been so long since I've had any time or energy to do anything besides just barely function at work and with study. I look forward to getting in better shape and just a new hobby/activity.
Of course, there is plenty more going on with us here but that is the basic story for now.
Thanks for reading!
Of course, there is plenty more going on with us here but that is the basic story for now.
Thanks for reading!
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