Liver 'N Onions. With Hair!

There's something on my mind that's really been bothering me lately. More precisely, there's something on my head that's really been bothering me; or rather, there's something NOT on my head.

Namely, this is hair.

Under normal circumstances, I have literally enough hair on my head for at least two other people; as if to mock this fact, it generally floats in a large, uncontrollable, puffy halo around my face. However, I am no longer living under normal circumstances.

I am living under the tyranny of an out-of-control thyroid. And one of the (many) things that out-of-control thyroids do to you is make you lose hair.

Clumps of it are lying on the ground, sitting on my keyboard, floating in the breeze. When I wash what remains of it, it clogs the drain. When I touch it, it comes out between my fingers; and when I cook, it gets into my food.

I hate when it gets into my food the most. I have to spend a lot of time searching for hairs and pulling them out of the way, and it's not fun to exercise that restraint when you are unbearably hungry all the time.

• French toast. With hair!
  
• Ginger-chicken and rice! WITH HAIR!!
• Liver 'n' onions...with HAIR.
  

My fast food needs no condiments; my ice cream needs no toppings.

Hair is an eco-friendly, recyclable, high-protein food source. I am the future.

The only problem is that there's not a lot of it left on my head. So I'm just going to have to pretend I'm really, really fond of hats.

Electricity Costs A Lot of Money in Cambodia

So, I got my electric bill this weekend. And apparently it costs more to run things here in Cambodia than it does back in my Ohio, USA homeland.

Heads up to anyone coming out here thinking living expenses are cheap.

I fully confess that my time here has been marked by inexplicably high bills. I also fully confess that, due to hyperthyroidism and my consequent difficulties managing hot temperatures, I have spent the better part of my February running my air con full blast.

But NINETY DOLLARS? I mean, come on!! That's more than a lot of folks in this country even make in a month. That's like twice what I ever spent on electricity in the USA!! Phnom Penh has one of the most cheap, efficient and safe-to-drink water systems in the world, but electricity costs me such a large percentage of my monthly wages? I think my soul just broke in half.

Look, you can even see the source of my agony:

WTF?

I discussed it with my landlady, my co-teachers, and even my tuk-tuk driver. No one seems to know how one person can ring up all that. I do know, however, that the bill was initially given to the three people below me, who argued the cost. So the landlady gave it to me. And after some hard-hitting questions, I found myself extruding an extra hundred dollar bill from my bank account.

And what difference does it make? Like Gamal Abdel Nasser, I was born to a poor family, and I will live and die a poor [wo]man. The utilities companies will make sure of it. I AM PROUD.

Rant over, thanks for listening.

Bad Thyroid! Heal!

If I have learned one thing during my time here, it is: Don't ever get a thyroid infection.

I think I am recovering from one right now, and it sucks. SUCKS.

Sometime in early- to mid-January, my body suddenly started destroying itself. You can read the very long version of what happened to me right here (and it still doesn't really explain everything I went through), but I don't want to repeat it all here. It's grim.

The illness was really, really acute for about the first 4-6 weeks (it's the "near-death" crisis that led me to create this blog). After that, it slowly started getting better, but suffice to say, it's still causing me some grief.

This is your thyroid:

When it's attacked by antibodies or a virus, it starts freaking out, shedding all of it's special "T4" thyroid hormones, which looks approximately like this:

Too much T4 shed into your bloodstream will intoxicate you. It puts you into a hypermetabolic state, turning you into an insane maniac that will eat everything in his/her path. You are also constantly freaked out and convinced that you are going to die.

Recovery has been a long, slow battle to be fought day-to-day, hour-to-hour, breath-to-breath. Hope and pray that you never have to know what hyperthyroidism feels like!

This week, I have been feeling okay (sort of. Except for the bone-weariness, sensitivity to temperatures, and the need to eat entire pizzas four times a day). Next week, who knows? I may feel 100%...or I may descend back to the depths of hell...it's carrying on waaaay longer than the internet says it's supposed to.

I shouldn't rely on the internet to solve my problems, but...the medical establishment denies that I even have a problem. They tell me it's "just stress" or a "bid for attention", or worse, that I am a drug addict. That would be funny if it weren't such an insulting falsehood.

So this is where the start of this blog finds me: trying to get better, and hoping I have nothing worse than a temporary inflammation of the thyroid (although if this is the case, I get to go HYPOthyroid next!).

No, it has nothing to do with Phnom Penh, but if I randomly die, this is probably the reason!