Help me grow

The story

20 years ago I came out of theatre without anyone knowing of the problem, I was as cold as ice to the touch and all I wanted to do was sleep. My excited parents wanted to see my beautiful green eyes, but they stayed firmly closed as I was so tired. I wasn't a very hungry baby and I had to be woken up to eat, why wouldn't they just let me sleep!? My mama was waiting for her midnight and early morning calls to feed and take care of me, those never came as I was fast asleep. I think my mama must have felt like a lucky mama with such a well behaved baby.

Finally the day came when I could go home away from all the crying babies and nurses constantly waking me up, Perhaps then I could finally sleep. I sat in my car seat all buckled up and ready to go home, when suddenly I was taken out of my car seat and the nurse pricked me in the arm with a needle, I was quite awake then!

The day they told my mama I had a problem called ' hypothyroidism', she seemed to cry a lot , especially when they showed her charts and pictures of what this problem actually meant and what could happen.

She cried so much as they taught her how to prick me, which confused  me as I could not understand why my mama would want to hurt me like that.

My mama was only trying to help me. Hypothyroidism means that my body does not produce the proper hormones that make me grow and if you don't have those hormones your hands, feet, nose and ears are extremely cold and you tend to sleep a lot as your body is trying to grow but it can't. Therefore my mama had to give me man-made  hormones. This began with my
mama pricking me with a needle every morning to get the medicine in. As I grew I had to take a man-made syrup with the hormones in it.

That was 20 years ago and many needle pricks and blood tests later, now I just take two small pills every morning and have blood tests every 6 months to make sure the pills are the correct dosage. I had to learn responsibility at a very young age by remembering to take my pills every morning with the harsh reality that if I forget to take my medicine I could possibly die.

Now I sit here 20 years old looking back at my growth realising how much of the help and education I took for granted with my raging hormones and teenage ambitions. Today I live 13000+ miles away from my mama and past wishing to pass the experience and knowledge on to the next unintentionally sleepy baba.

Thank you to all those doctors and nurses who took care of me from the beginning and all the way through my 15 surgeries, I am a very healthy and ambitious grown up sleepy adult. 

But mostly, Thank you Mama!