I don’t have pretty girly hands. I have hands that look like I work, because I do. My hands take a beating every day. I do all my own cleaning, don’t have a dishwasher, and I do my own yard work. My second job at Walmart is working the site to store pickup. So I am moving boxes and opening and breaking down cardboard for hours. I have never been someone who wore gloves to do anything, although I should. I also like to paint and sew which can be drying. Life can be hard on your hands.
I remember clearly last summer, the day I noticed what was going on with my nails. I was asked to cash out in lawn and garden for a few hours. The pace is much slower out there and I was helping out doing a little cleaning. I looked down and saw that I had glue or something on my fingernails. I scraped at it but it didn’t quite come off. Some did but then there was more. And then I realized, it wasn’t glue. It was like a layer of my fingernails flaking off.
I thought that was odd, and when I got home, I took some time to clean them, and put on a ton of lotion. I scoured the Internet for answers. Name it, I tried it. And none of it worked. I asked when I had an endocrinologist appointment. She looked at it and said, “Lots of Hashimoto patients have that. Are you taking your vitamins?” Well, yeah! I took vitamins, just like I was told to. I did everything I was asked to do. She told me to just apply some clear polish to protect them. That didn’t seem like much of a solution since it wasn’t going to fix the cause.
What I didn’t understand at the time and Dr. Jack taught me after we started working together, was that I could have been taking super duper delux vitamins, the absolute best in the world, and it wouldn’t matter, because when your cells are inflamed, good stuff is not getting in. So if vitamins don’t get in what else doesn’t?? Yup…. Everything! Nutrition isn’t getting in, medication for thyroid, not getting in. How do you fix that? You have to fix the inflammation, that’s the crux of the problem, not bandaid it hoping for the best. The answer to solution was simple. Follow Dr. Jack’s program to the letter of the law.
At the time it was going on, I just thought, “Oh great, another symptom to deal with!” I am a teacher and despite my hard working hands I still want them to look somewhat decent. After all, I am always working with students pointing out things on their paper and working closely with them. I foolishly and lacking education in this area believed that just applying hand lotion could fix the skin issue which was also part of this but what could fix the nail issue? Ha ha…. Little did I know that all the hand lotion in the world was not going to solve that issue either.
I tried every kind of fortifying polish but no luck, the peeling continued. And soon my nails started feeling way too soft to me. So then I moved on to Jamberry. I have a great friend who is a consultant, and she got me started on them. They are really cute sticker type nails, they last over ten days, and are not toxic. They are easy to put on, and not harsh to remove. On me, they lasted about a week because of the harshness of my job, but they did what I needed them to, they protected my softening, sensitive nails. That helped to protect them, and when I removed them, I noticed that near the nail bed looked healthy. However as soon as they grew just a little, the flaking would begin and looked awful from bed to tip.
Well, this summer is a different ball game!! If nails grow approximately 3 mm per month and I have been with Dr. Jack for nine months, and you figure it took a bit for my cellular inflammation to heal, then this picture explains it all. Sorry the picture truly does not do it justice. 
It’s my thumb nail, which is my nail that seems to take forever to grow until recently when it started catching up. Sorry it’s not the best quality picture and I wish you could see it in person to truly appreciate how awesome the new growth looks and how icky the top looks. You can see the damaged part in the upper third. My other nails only have that same dry flaky part on the tips. And actually they are not flaking anymore, they just had the “scars” of that experience. Imagine that ugliness from front to back, constantly flaking off. Yuck! I showed it to Dr. Jack in person. Even he did a double take and said, “Let me see that again.”
Now, my nails are hard again like normal people! They have new growth that is healthy and strong, smooth and no lines of chipping. To some people, it might seems like a simple little annoyance, but for Hashimoto patients, it’s one more in a line of hundreds of symptoms you have to deal with even though you are medicated. And what no one ever tells you is, you don’t have to just deal with it. It is possible to heal it and every other symptom with it!
I still love my Jamberry nails! But now, I am wearing them only for fun! And not to protect and hide the ugly truth of what’s underneath.