Thyroids, Internalized Fatphobia and Black Women

I know. The title is a lot but stay with me.

When you are a big Black girl who used to wear her mother’s ‘fat clothes’, you don’t question random low effort weight loss. Nope. You lift a praise up and double down on your history of problematically centering male gaze. Well, if you are a 20 something Melissa then that’s what you do and did.

I was sweaty, slender, and always felt a bit sick. However, I was on top of the world because 1 and 3 could be forgiven if it got me 2. I was content to go on this way until I was goaded into seeing a healthcare professional by my work supervisor. I still hear her ‘you must like being sick’ taunt during particularly dark days.

After a quick check for swollen lymph nodes and a blood draw to look at my TSH level, it was determined I had an over active thyroid. Melissa, what the frak is TSH? TSH refers to “Thyroid Stimulating Hormone”. The normal range is 0.45 – 5.3 uIU/mL. If you under .45 then your thyroid is doing the most. When your thyroid is overactive, you may experience anxiety, trouble sleeping, sweatiness, irregular heartbeat and unexplained weight loss. If you over 5.3 then your thyroid is doing the least. When thyroid is under active, you may feel tired, depressed, cold, dry skinned and experience weight gain. According to Henry Ford, my little hormone was dangerously overactive (below .45) and needed to be destroyed.

Following that appointment, I was given a radiation pill to kill it and then a prescription for a synthroid to take for the rest of my life. That small pill taken on an empty stomach would act as a vital hormone I never paid attention to before my 20s.

I did not take aforementioned information seriously. My weight came back, my personal life sucked and I was a new social worker so everything was stress. I could fill this whole page with the list of reasons I was so reckless with my health but it all comes to be internalized fatphobia. I was so focused and then defeated when it came to my weight and body image that nothing else really mattered. This lack of care for self had me going on and off (mostly off) my synthroid which took me to hypothyrodism. I do not remember my lowest number but the highest was 98.3.

This would be a pattern for me until April 2024. My TSH level would go abnormally high and I would shrug my shoulders then take an increase in my dosage to make up for lost time. My wake up call was a week long hospital stay following a bunch of medicine noncompliance. In the 20 years since my thyroid diagnosis, I was also diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis which gave me another barrier to losing weight and another reason to not care. More on that later.

In most social settings, I have run into a Black woman from Detroit who also dealt with an out of control thyroid. We have talked about methods of synthroid taking or how their levels didn’t require a whole thyroid removal. I learned that thyroid issues also ran in my family. My great aunts had diagnosis with one having hers surgically removed. Ten years after my hyperthyroid diagnosis, my mother was diagnosed with the same condition. Recently my aunt (technically second cousin but she’s my mother’s peer soo…AUNT) had to seek an endocrolognoist.

My thyroid story isn’t their story but I want to learn. I want to stretch our stories out side by side and see what lessons we can learn from each other. When I open up the scope to include all autoimmune disorders, I am then looking at most Black women I know and love. Most of the women I know and love are Black and living in a body that fights itself.

I haven’t figured out how I’m going to go about this research. I don’t even have a full grasp on the question I’m asking but I’m finally ready to gently remove the willful ignorance I’ve worn since 20 and ask.