Once upon a time...or how it all started Part 1

So I guess this is where we start the journey.

I was never a skinny girl. But I wasn't always obese.

The change started somewhere around the year 2000. I was 24 years old and I started to bloat... and bloat... and grow bigger. I gained weight even when I was watching what I ate and exercising.

I come from a family with less than perfect genes. Diabetes, heart diseases, cancer... so I used to get all my blood work done periodically at least once a year, preferably twice a year, from an early age. This also meant I used to see my GP....a lot. Needless to say that with the bloating came a gradual deterioration of my blood tests results and an increase in my blood pressure.

He's nice, my GP... but he was sure, more than 100% sure in fact, that my blood work is bad and that I am gaining weight because I eat too much and exercise too little.... he even wanted to put me on diet pills (he tried that several times). I refused... I read about those pills and I could feel something was wrong with me... simply wrong.

I tried everything. I tried diets - counting calories, counting points (weight watchers), I went on walks.... nothing worked. I also started getting headaches. Mean nasty headaches. and I was tired, all the time!

My mother kept saying I need to see an endocrinologist. She suspected something is wrong with my thyroid. My GP wouldn't hear of it. He kept thinking i am perfectly ok.... just lazy...

This went on for years. I hurt my back and my right knee in the process (excess weight can do that to you) and I kept gaining weight and I was quite desperate.

Then in August 2005 I decided that enough was enough. I decided to seek a specialist and pay whatever it takes to get tested and diagnosed.

At the time I was working for an Academic Institute and I knew many professors from various fields. I contacted a professor of endocrinology from the faculty of Medicine and I went to see him.

He weighed me, measured my waist circumference, checked my skin tone in some places and asked a whole lot of questions... then he told me to get up and felt my neck.

His next words were ones I never want to hear again in my life: "I feel 2 lumps in your thyroid. We'll have to start with blood work and ultrasounds and take it from there. Oh and I also suspect you are diabetic".

Those words were the beginning of the journey that changed my life....