I surprisingly notice the rage rising inside,
The unknown, scary aggression shows its face.
Some old resentments, fiery & dormant anger,
Don’t know what all would come to the surface.
The gruff tone of my own voice is unfamiliar,
My intended, friendly words now sound strange.
The shorter breath, unusually faster heartbeats,
The dizzy energy, and how often all these change.
The sweating brows and trembling hands,
Some days I cannot take the heat & light.
The muscle aches, and those hunger pangs,
The agony haunts on a sleepless night.
Then there are days when I can’t tolerate cold,
Sapped of all my energy, I lie quietly on the bed.
The usual zeal diminishes, and a gloom creeps in,
As the malaise takes over, I can’t see the road ahead.
The low energy, apathy are completely unknown,
I give up easily, so much to my own horror.
Puffy face, dry skin and thinning hair,
With dismay, I watch stranger in the mirror.
The body & mind that I haven’t experienced before,
It feels like adding a decade or two to my age.
I wonder which way this would eventually go,
Is it here to stay, or is it a just a transient stage?
Swinging between hyper & hypo extremes helplessly,
I fully understand, I empathize with each of these.
Took them for granted, but now I long for these,
The bliss of middle path and being at ease.
My voice, my skin, hair and my temperament,
Much of what others see, seem to have changed.
I wonder all that I tend to associate with myself,
How much of it, would still remain unchanged?
With time, everything invariably changes,
This too shall pass, if I observe distantly.
In this inevitable process of becoming,
What remains, is my essence eventually.
Watching these unpredictable manifestations daily,
I often keep wondering, am I just this body?
And something deeper inside keeps questioning,
Is there a being that is independent of this body?
I thank this small gland,
For offering me a rare chance.
With all the bemusement,
I watch this thyroid dance.
© Manish Hatwalne (21/10/2018)
A poetic memoir of experiences by a patient of Subacute Thyroiditis.
Subacute Thyroidits Image: By Nephron [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], from Wikimedia Commons
Ramblings & reflections 
Love the last para!
Not the rest of it? 😛
Wonderful TED talk that I came across. Ponder over this…
“What are these experiences of altered selves telling us? They’re telling us that just about everything we take to be real about ourselves — “real” in the sense that we think we are always experiencing undeniable truths about our bodies, our stories — well, that’s just not the case.”
” This experiencing “I” in the question “Who am I?” is at the heart of the debate about the self. This experiencing “I” doesn’t go away if one or a few aspects of the self are disrupted. But what if all of the aspects of the self that comprise us were to be disrupted?”