Why I built ThyroidTools

When I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, the hardest part wasn't the diagnosis itself. It was everything around it - the waiting, the appointments that flew by before I'd asked what I meant to, the blood results I couldn't read, and the quiet sense that I was supposed to just get on with it.

None of that is a complaint about the people treating me. Most of them were kind and stretched thin. It's just that the system is built to treat a thyroid, and I was a whole person trying to keep a job, relationships and some sense of myself while my body did strange things.

I didn't need another leaflet telling me what the thyroid does. I needed help turning up to my appointment prepared, and somewhere honest to read at 2am.

So I started keeping my own records - a spreadsheet of my bloods, a list of questions before each appointment, notes on how I actually felt week to week. Over time that scrappy folder became the thing I leaned on most. ThyroidTools is that folder, rebuilt properly and given away for free.

What this blog is for

The guides on the rest of the site are meant to be evergreen - the sort of thing you'd look up once and trust. This blog is the other half: more personal, more of-the-moment. Things I've learned, questions people keep asking, and the occasional honest reflection on living with a thyroid condition rather than just being treated for one.

It is not medical advice, and it never will be. I'm a patient, not a clinician - everything here is written to help you have better conversations with the people who are. Where I mention numbers or treatments, they're there to help you ask the right questions, not to tell you what to do.

What's coming

A few pieces I want to write, drawn from questions I hear again and again:

• What I wish I'd known the week I was diagnosed
• Why "normal" bloods can still leave you feeling awful
• How to be believed when you describe your symptoms
• What actually happens on the day of radioactive iodine treatment

If there's something you'd have wanted to read when you were at your most lost, that's exactly the kind of thing this blog is for. Thanks for being here.

• Joe