Marty convinced me to join the local gym.  We signed up on Sunday and now I need to work up the nerve to actually go.  This is not because I think people will laugh at my dreadful fitness level but because there are 75 rules of conduct for using it.  It took my Japanese teacher an hour to translate these and then another hour to go through the additional instructions I had been given.

Marty broke a rule while entering the gym on Sunday as he didn’t remove his shoes at the entrance.  I was dawdling along behind him and saw a couple of other people remove their shoes, so didn’t make the same mistake.  (My enthusiasm for signing up was evident in my reluctance to enter.)

I know that there are rules for using gyms in the U.K. but I can’t remember being explicitly told that it was forbidden to drink alcohol inside the gym.  Here there are lots of rules about shoes, but then wearing appropriate foot wear is an important part of the culture.  I find it odd that tattoos are forbidden but this also seems to be a cultural issue.

There are some rules that amused me:

• Don’t dye your hair in the shower room
• Don’t do your laundry in the shower room
• Don’t read newspapers or magazines in the sauna or steam room
• Don’t scrub or exfoliate your skin in the sauna
• No gargling is allowed at the water fountain
• Don’t wear jeans or skirts during aerobic classes

I find it odd to provide such explicit rules.  Why say that you can’t do your laundry in the shower room?  Is it O.K. to do this in the swimming pool or in the spa?  I imagine not, but when I see rules like this I start to wonder if I can do anything I want as long as there is no rule against it.

There was a a whole separate page on how to use the swimming pools.  I’m not sure I want to actually try swimming.  Before you enter the pool you have to sign some sort of health-check sheet and have your blood pressure taken (and it seems you do this every time you go).  You also must wear a swimming cap – something about hair clogging up filters.  I don’t own a swimming cap and my Japanese teacher thinks I’m going to need to buy one for a child as my head is small.  She said I would look cute.

Then there are the instructions on how to use the lanes.  There are one-way lanes, u-turn lanes, beginner lanes, and  lanes that you can only front-crawl in.  There are directions on the proper way to overtake a slow swimmer.  Seriously it tells me that I can only overtake on the right.  There are also the expected rules about noise, splashing, diving, walking…  I wasn’t actually expecting there to be rules about how to stop and walk in the swimming pool but it seems that the madness is endless.  And then there is the mysterious rule that states it’s O.K. to wear gloves in the pool.  Neither my teacher or I could come up with any explanation for that.

Given how horrified I am with the whole thing I have rang a Japanese friend who is going to go with me to the gym tomorrow.  I’m hoping that if the staff start to yell at us for our stupidity that she can at least translate for me.

I’m fed up today.  I spent the morning at the hospital.  I thought I would feel better when my concerns about my thyroid function were confirmed.  But I don’t.  I now have proof that the tiredness, joint pains, weight gain, and brain fogginess are getting worse because my thyroid function is declining. What I don’t have is a cure.

It’s nearly a year  since I started taking medication for low thyroid function.  At the beginning I was told that it should be an easy thing to correct.  I would just need to take a tablet a day for the rest of my life.  It hasn’t been easy.  The disease appears to be progressing faster than the medication adjustments.

Today’s appointment left me feeling angry.  I was told that although my levels aren’t normal, and are still declining, that they want to wait another four months before changing my medication.  I tried to explain how tired I felt but the Doctor brushed my comments aside.  She had already written the prescription before I entered the room and wasn’t interested at all in my changing condition or symptoms.

I’m going to have to go and see my GP.  He won’t be happy with my current hormone levels.  I don’t know if he can override the hospitals decision but he can maybe do something about the joint pain and other symptoms.

I’ve been really tired the past few days.  I don’t seem to have very much energy.  I’m hoping it’s just a side-effect of the travel with some jet-lag thrown in and not my thyroid medication.

Now that I’m home again it’s time to start back into my exercise program.  I did consider continuing this whilst travelling but it was too awkward.  At home I use quite a few exercise DVDs which I didn’t want to bring with me.  This doesn’t mean I didn’t exercise at all but it did lack structure.

Marty has been going to the gym regularly and has been trying to convince me to join.  I find the gym boring.  Why would I want to sit on a bike that goes nowhere when I can go out and cycle around the river?  He has, unfortunately, come up with a valid reason.  Most of the exercise I do is aerobic.  I like to dance, cycle, and hit things.  I don’t really do any sort of strength training.  As thyroid disease causes muscle weakness I need to do something about this.

Yesterday I added strength training to my daily routine.  I have a set of dumbbells and a book on how to use them.  Day 1 focused on the top part of the body, which was fine, but today was all about the legs and lower back.  My legs don’t want to exercise.  I have enlarged calf muscles, as I walk strangely, but the muscles in the top of my legs are wussy things that like to hide behind layers of fat.  I’m not even going to look at what’s coming up in Day 3 in case it frightens my abdominal muscles into finding a way to prevent me exercising.

Tomorrow I might go the gym with Marty.  I suppose it can’t hurt to give it a go (though I have a feeling that those words may be poorly chosen.)

I’ve been trying to find exercise to do that I enjoy and that I can sensibly add to my daily routine.  I woke up this morning wanting to cycle.  The river path is so peaceful and it wasn’t too hot.  I’m not sure how viable cycling will be once it’s gets really hot but for now I’m going to enjoy my morning cycles.

I wake up everyday to stiff and achy muscles.  The variety in my exercise program does lead to variety in my achiness.

At the start of the program, two weeks ago, I got out a measuring tape.  It’s a horrifying experience (who wants to know how fat they really are) but at least now I know that after two weeks my waist is 5 centimetres smaller.

I haven’t felt like blogging lately.  I’ve started an new exercise regime which is zapping all my energy.  I need to do this as my under-active thyroid has done bad things to my muscles and I want to get stronger.

Today I start week two of the 100 push-ups challenge and the 200 sit-ups challenge.  Once I do that I have 30 minutes of high-impact aerobics.  After that -  I’ll just collapse in a heap.

I was back at the thyroid hospital last week.  I was a bit worried about the blood tests but the nurse had no problem finding my veins.  As I suspected my hormones still haven’t stabilized and my medication was increased again. The Doctor is hoping that I will start to feel better by mid-summer.

I decided to try a mid-week hospital visit this time in the hope it would be less crowded.  Instead of the 500 hundred or so people that are there on a Saturday morning there was about 100 this morning.  The only drawback was that I saw a different Doctor.

As I suspected, as I still spend a lot of time feeling exhausted, my medication needed to be increased.  I now have to spend another two months waiting for this new level to stabilize. Given how slow this process is I am not convinced that my hormone levels will be correctly adjusted in time for the summer conference season.  I am going to need to build in a lot of extra time to recover from the travel and the full days at the conferences.

Yesterday I went to see a dermatologist.  I had been putting this off as I had hoped that my thyroid medication would be working by now and I know my skin will be very dry until this stabilizes.  But since I’d gotten to the stage where any weight on my feet caused me pain I decided not to wait any longer.

I now have a variety of creams to treat my skin with.  I still don’t know exactly what is wrong.  The dermatologist had a book on how to explain skin conditions in English.  She used this to explain that I have eczema on my head.  But she didn’t know how to explain the problem with my feet.  She was able to tell me that it’s not something that can be cured – as my body is attacking itself – but it can be controlled.

Now I need to find something to help with fatigue and sensitivity to cold.