Coming back from Graves’ disease
In 1994, I met a client named Sheree Wheat. She was a recently retired letter carrier, a 36-yearold stay-at-home mom and a part-time house painter. Back then, she needed help dealing with the neck, shoulder and back pain that came from hours of painting walls and ceilings. After a successful training program, she and her husband moved out of town and we lost touch.
In 2016, I received an email from Sheree. She had moved back to Hamilton and was hoping that I could help her again. She was 60 years old and dealing with sore, aching joints and low energy. She was babysitting her grandson full time, but was having trouble getting up and down from the floor. In her words, she was “feeling old” and her jeans were too tight!
We began a program that included standard strength exercises along with functional fitness moves to make everyday tasks easier. Within four months, her joints didn’t hurt, getting up and down with the baby was a breeze, her energy was back “100 per cent” … and her jeans fit better. Things were going great until I noticed something strange during a reassessment. I recorded an abnormally high heart rate and blood pressure reading. Sheree said she hadn’t been feeling great and was starting to forget things. She was also experiencing headaches, dizziness and had blacked out one night.
Last summer, we postponed her workouts because she was exhausted; often in bed by 8 p.m. With all of the success at the start of the year, this was hard to accept. By August, she was being treated for a “thyroid issue” and in September, Sheree was diagnosed with Graves’ disease; an auto-immune disorder affecting the thyroid gland.
We kept in touch during her treatments, and in January she was cleared to resume an exercise program. When she came to see me, it looked like she had aged about 20 years. She told me that she felt helpless and needed assistance to stand if she had been kneeling.
She was terrified and felt completely dependent upon her family. Through it all, however, she kept thinking that if she could just get strong again she’d be all right.
In January, we began a very light training program using rubber resistance bands and body weight. We developed a circuit that allowed Sheree to pace herself and I taught her variations that she could do at home. The movements were based on pushing, pulling, bending at the knees and rotating as well as walking or marching on the spot. The point of this workout was to get her moving and to build some momentum toward a return to more intense exercise.
By March she had made tremendous gains. To start with, she looked great. Her posture was better and she breezed through the workout that had exhausted her just weeks before. We added more intense cardiovascular training after each “round” of exercises and made plans to add weight lifting when we meet this month.
When I spoke with Sheree about the turnaround that she has experienced, she was quick to credit the role her doctors played in her recovery. She also believes, wholeheartedly, that her strength and vitality have returned almost exclusively due to her fitness program. Without it, she might be “better,” but she would not have the quality of life she wants. Simple things, such as lifting her grandson, just wouldn’t be possible.
Although she has a long way to go in managing her disease, Sheree believes she has the tools to cope with the challenges ahead and that strength training is at the forefront of her defences.