Health Condition Profile: Mindy McNally
Mindy McNally is a sophomore majoring in Chemistry at Rowan University. Her typical day involves waking up at 6 am, eating a healthy breakfast, and leaving for class. She then goes back and forth between classes and her job as a Student Researcher at Science Hall in the Inorganic Chemistry Lab. Yet for the past 4 years, she has been living with the health condition known as hypothyroidism, which she said is more common in women than men.
Diagnosed during her sophomore year of high school, Mindy takes medication daily and expects to live with hypothyroidism for the rest of her life. McNally explained, “Hypothyroidism is a metabolic condition that effects heart rate sometimes. It’s actually rare if it affects your heart rate, but that’s what happened to me.” She added, ”It causes people to feel very lethargic and it’s just really hard to function.”
McNally added that if someone with hypothyroidism does not get treated, the patient can go into a coma or even die, so she takes her medication to balance out her metabolic condition. Until her metabolism is stable, she has to get blood work done every 6 months.
McNally was diagnosed with hypothyroidism after she collapsed while she was walking with her friends at a marching band competition. McNally explained, “The next thing that I actually remember is waking up in a hospital bed in a hallway. My then-boyfriend had carried me over to the band director, who called the EMTs over. They came over and they couldn’t find a pulse, so I was sort of dead at that point.”
Afterwards, an ambulance took her to the hospital because the EMTs were not getting a response from her. She was sent to 3 different cardiologists and endocrinologists; each blamed the other doctor. The doctors did a lot of tests, such as an EKG and an ultrasound.
“My condition was described to me by an endocrinologist as not genetic but it runs in families,” McNally explained. She added that her mother has the same condition, and perhaps her grandmother and/or great-grandmother.
In spite of her condition, McNally remains physically active by going to the gym as often as she can and eating breakfast every morning. Although she is a vegetarian, she explained that she tries to eat healthy food that both fits the categories of the food pyramid as well as her lifestyle. As a hypothyroid patient, McNally said that it is especially hard to control her weight so that she needs to keep herself aware of her living habits.
Medline Plus lists being female and being over 50 years of age as risk factors for hypothyroidism- although she is female, McNally is younger than the usual hypothyroid patient, although the condition is common.
EndocrineWeb explains, ”The estimates vary, but approximately 10 million Americans have this common medical condition. In fact, as many as 10% of women may have some degree of thyroid hormone deficiency.” If left untreated, hypothyroidism explains that the patient can suffer from severe life-threatening depression, heart failure, or coma, according to EndocrineWeb.
If you are worried about being at risk for hypothyroidism, MedicineNet explained that a blood test is required to determined whether or not you have hypothyroidism. The diagram provided is taken from Medline Plus.
Stay Healthy!
- R.
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