It was a couple of minutes walk to school but it seemed to take forever. The other kids would be fooling around throwing bags, homework, jumpers and coats as they went. I would have my homework (I'd struggled with for hours) safely tucked in my bag. My tie would be done up, jumper on and coat done up to the top, even in summer.

My feet would be ice-blocks and I would be tensed up with cold. I'd have half a round of toast in my stomach because my Mum insisted I had breakfast and I would feel physically sick. Usually I had pockets full of tissues and maybe a mint sweet in preperation for such an event actually occurring, although I knew from experience that I would be fine so long as I walked slowly enough. Being asthmatic, and inhalers not being a popular solution at the time, no one, except the games teacher, really questioned my lack of physical activity.

Mum reconed that I suffered with my nerves. Maybe she wan't wrong. It's never easy being different. The games teacher did have a problem with me being an 'onlooker' aswell as the fact that I couldn't run. I couldn't catch or throw and never knew where I was supposed to be either. It didn't take me long to learn to walk about looking like I was busy and generally keeping out of her way and the way of fellow sports people.

In the last year at school I was like "Yes!" School is not going to be compulsary anymore, but at the sametime I was considering staying on because a)it was what was expected and b)I was terrified of whatever it was that awaited me when I left.

Everyone had to have a medical in the last year. The nurse weighed and measured me, and asked questions. I read down the eye wall chart with ease. She smiled and concluded that I was fine. My lack of height (4' 4"), and maturity, (totally flat chested) was not a problem at all. However I was pale and maybe needed iron tablets. Sure enough I was very aneamic and started a course of tablets imediately. Iron didn't seem to make me feel any better at all, but was probably helpful because puberty and periods soon caught me up.

I didn't stay on at school. I couldn't face going back after the long summer holiday. I had an interview with the careers officer and was sent on a YTS scheme. During that time I went ice-skating with my sister. The ice-rink was perishingly cold but I had fun once I ventured from the edge. That was until I fell over and hurt my wrist!

After three weeks of doing everything left handed I went to the hospital. A little doctor came over to me, abandoning where he was supposed to be going. All credit to the guy, he knew exactly what he was talking about, even though his foreighn accent meant it was gobbeldy gook to me. He looked at the rough skin on my hands, my hooded eyes, and checked my appaullingly slow reflexes.

A few months later I had an appointment to go to the Endocrine clinic in Manchester, which had been arranged by the doctor. Here I was weighed, measured, poked, proded, injected, ogled and photographed. Finally they sent me home with tablets. i had juvenile myxodema.

Mum carefully cut one of the tablets into two for me, and within half an hour of taking that tiny half tablet I had warm feet! A miricale! Other tests were done and I was told that no other glands and organs had been affected. I'd had this condition since the age of sevenor eight and my bones were that of an eight year old, brittle as well, hence my broken wrist which had now been re-set but was absolutely fine now.

I continued to go back and forth to the clinic. Medication was increased slowly and my appitite grew. So did I, although I actually lost a lot of inches from my waistline. I had energy, was usually warm, and actually shivered when I wasn't. I dreamt at night and began doing normal teenage stuff. All these things were totally alien to me.

At the age of twenty, the doctors decided that there was no need for me to keep attending the clinic because I was expecting. This would not have been possible if my medication was wrong. Today I take 175mcg of thyroxine a day and have three great kids, enjoy exercise immensley and have lovely warm feet!

I am not a doctor and the list below is probably not complete... you are very unlikely to suffer from all of these symptoms even if you do have an under active thyroid