Open Writing

I didn’t realize that I had been married to Deki (pronounced day-key) for 15 years when something bad happened to me. It was when he had to go to Italy for some official training. He was going to leave me and the children for 3 months. A few days after he left, I felt something wrong happening with my health. I started to have difficulty sleeping. I was losing weight drastically. My heart was racing fast. I sweated much. My concentration was getting poor, and my hands trembled all the time.

It scared me to death to see how much hair I was losing every time I combed my hair! My skin got dry and wrinkled like a very old woman’s does. I didn’t know what I was really suffering from. I had no one to talk to. I didn’t want to make my parents, who lived far from me, worry about me. My children were still too young to understand what was happening to their mother. I could only cry and cry. I didn’t let my husband know about what was happening to me either. I always told him that we were doing fine every time we talked on the phone.

It had been 2 months since Deki went. One day he sent me a fax saying that he wanted me to come to Italy. Despite my very poor condition (and that the doctors I visited saying that I was just lacking sleep and rest), I prepared all the documents. The long journey from Indonesia to the Netherlands, Milan, and finally Cremona—the small, peaceful town in North Italy where Deki was posted—made me very exhausted. But I told myself to go on, and that I would be able to see my husband very soon.

The time I saw him picking me up at the airport I felt such a yearning. He began to be puzzled to see how much I changed, not only physically but also emotionally. Not understanding what was happening to me, he asked me why he had never seen me happy being with him in Europe. I became tensed so easily, irritated and emotional when Deki said something that didn’t please me.

Those were my horrible days—for one month—before we came back to Indonesia when his training was over.

My condition was getting worse and worse. Sometimes the suffering made me want to commit suicide! Fortunately I soon met my cousin whose husband is a doctor. Knowing the condition I was in, she told me to have my T3/T4 hormones checked. The laboratory results showed me that my T3 and T4 hormones were being critically hyperactive. I heard from the doctor I visited that I was suffering from hyperthyroidism, a disease with a name I had not heard before.

He gave me pills and vitamin E, and told me not to work hard. During the treatment with pills, my hair loss got worse and worse. I almost became bald. Probably I lost more than 60% of my hair. I looked very much like a monster. This condition terrified me and my days were always full of tears . . .

But how lucky I was. In my suffering, my husband always encouraged me, and was so supportive of me. Once while I was weeping, I asked him whether he was ashamed to have a bald-headed wife like me. He embraced me, saying, 'I love you for better and for worse. Be patient, you are now having the treatment, and everything will be fine.' I thanked my hyperthyroidism. It helped me see that my husband loved me for what I am . . .

My daughter tried to tease me, saying, 'Mama, please don’t worry about getting bald There are so many wigs you can buy now. You can choose which one you like, whether it's curly, straight, long, short, and whether the colour is green, red or violet. . . ' I laughed while I was still in tears. Oh, I felt so fortunate. In such suffering, my family always came near me and gave me support.

Now I think that hyperthyroidism was the best gift that life could offer me. Without it I wouldn’t have known how much my husband and children love me.

I had to finally have the radio-iodine treatment which restricted the hyperactive hormones. I now live much better although neither I, nor the endocrinologist, know what caused me to have that disease.

© Herawati Lilie