๐คฆ๐พโโ๏ธ Too Strong to Listen: What Graves' Disease Taught Me About Myself
Jul 17, 2026
I'm a Doctor. I Still Ignored My Own Symptoms.
Graves' Disease Awareness Month · InformedCare
I'm a Doctor. I Still Ignored My Own Symptoms.
I could have diagnosed it in a patient in ten minutes. In myself, it took months.
My heart would race while I was sitting still. I was tired in a way that sleep never fixed. My weight was drastically dropping in a way I'd never experienced. I reasoned with myself, perhaps it was because I had undergone a bilateral mastectomy and so was experiencing some hormonal shifts. Besides I had once been 110 lbs in college.
I'm a physician. I should have known the warning signs. I have said the words "your body is telling you something" to more patients than I can count. And still — when it was my own body doing the talking — I rationalized it away.
If you have ever done the same, I'm sure you can relate ๐
๐ฟ The story I kept telling myself
Here is the thing about being the strong woman that you are. You get very good at pushing through. You learn to carry the heavy things, hold it together for everyone else, and quietly move your own needs to the bottom of the list.
So when my symptoms started, I had a ready explanation for each of them:
- The impending sense of doom and intense anxiety? PTSD I had just been through a harrowing experience with two back to back breast cancer diagnoses. I self -referred to a psychiatrist and requested that I start on Duloxetine which would also help with the post chemotherapy neuropathy I was suffering from at the time.
- Being unable to get up from the floor after a workout? I was probably just deconditioned after suffering heart failure related to the CDK inhibitors used to treat the cancer.
- The unbearable leg cramps that woke me up from sleep virtually every night? I just needed to stretch more.
- Being unable to write due to unexplained tremors? Probably just fatigue.
- The weight loss was probably a good thing — who questions that?
Notice the word that lived in every one of those sentences: just. That little word is how we talk ourselves out of taking ourselves seriously. It shrinks something real down into something we can keep ignoring.
๐ Why the strongest women override their own bodies
I want to be honest about something, because I think it matters more than any symptom list.
No one dismissed me. I dismissed myself.
I had been trained — by my work, by my culture, by a lifetime of being the capable one — to treat my own body as the last thing that deserved attention. Pushing through wasn't a failure. It was the skill that had carried me through three cancers, through two traumatic marriages, through a grueling residency training, through picking myself up every single time I hit a road bump and rebuilding my life.
But here's the thing- the very strength brought me through all these challenges (and more) was the same strength that taught me to override the signals my body was sending.
That's the part we don't say out loud enough. For so many professional women over 50 — we are the ones everyone else leans on — the hardest person to advocate for is ourselves.
๐ฉบ What my body was actually saying
What I kept explaining away had a name: Graves' disease.
Graves' is an autoimmune condition. An autoimmune disease is caused by the immune system sendig the wrong signal, in this case it is the thyroid gland, the small gland in your neck that sets the pace for your whole body. In Grave's disease excessive thyroid hormone is produced whic causes everything to speed up. The heart races. Metabolism is higher. You can lose weight without trying, feel anxious without a reason, and end up wired and exhausted at the very same time.
Grave's disease is more common in women. Here is why a condition like Grave's disease can hide in plain site. It's symptoms are the exact ones we are taught to expect and shrug off as we age. Tiredness. A fast heartbeat. Feeling "off."
When the culture hands you a reason to ignore something, you take it.
I'm not sharing this so you can diagnose yourself. I'm a health advocate, not your treating physician, and every body is different. I'm sharing it so that the next time your body raises its hand, you pause instead of reaching for just.
โจ Learning to listen
The turning point wasn't dramatic. It was when my oncologist put words to my worst fears and said I had lost too much weight and that she was ordering a CT scan of the chest, abdomen and pelvis, that I paused long enough. I bargained with her. "How about if you add a thyroid panel to my labs?" i countered.
When she called me urgently one evening and informed me that my thyroid levels were sky high and she was referring me to be seen by an endocrinologist, it all finally made sense. By this time I finally had to admit that I felt really ill. So I made a decision to stop pushing through and submit to a full workup.
That looked like a few simple things:
- I stopped negotiating with my symptoms.
- I got a proper workup instead of assuming I already knew the answer.
- I let myself be a person who needed care, not only a person who gives it.
- I chose to treat my own body as worth the same attention I give everyone else's.
None of that required me to be less strong. It required me to point my strength in a different direction — inward, for once.
๐ฆ A gentle invitation
I have faced my own mortality three times as a cancer survivor. You would think that would have made me quick to listen to my body. Instead, it took a racing heart, intense anxiety, literally stumbling and finding it difficult to get up and a diagnosis to teach me a lesson I now carry everywhere: taking yourself seriously is not weakness. It is wisdom.
If you have been pushing through something you keep meaning to deal with later, let this be your gentle nudge to stop pushing. Your body is not overreacting. It is talking to you. And you are allowed to listen.
You are not alone in this. If you have ever put your own health at the bottom of the list, that instinct makes sense — and it can change.
If this resonated with you, or if you know a woman who is quietly ignoring her own signals, share it with her. And if you'd like a thinking partner as you learn to advocate for yourself, I offer a free discovery call — no obligation, just a conversation to see if we're a fit to work together. ๐
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