My Thyroid Lab Tests by Hadis Maleki

Looking at the bunches of lab tests I had gathered since 2003, I decided to visualize my TSH lab results and other thyroid hormones. I was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism and Graves Disease in 2003, had a Radioactive Iodine therapy in 2006, and then switched to Hypothyroidism in 2009. I found this visualization a very personal experience, so I decided to do it by hand, paper-cutting, gluing, and writing. At first it was pleasant and unpleasant to recall all those years but I think the volunteer effort working on them and dealing with aesthetics using my hands led me to a friendship with the past; kind of getting tranquillity with dataviz.
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Years and months are shown both in the Iranian Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar. Horizontal lines are years and the leaves show TSH lab results. Size and color shows value and being inside or outside of the normal ranges. Tiny dots show the pills I was using during my therapy, Methimazol for hyperthyroidism, Propranolol for irregular heart beat, Levothyroixin for hypothyroidism, and Pred Forte was used to weaken the immune system as Graves Disorder is an autoimmune disorder and it leads to pressure on the muscles around the eyes and makes the eyes protrude. The dragonal shape is for the occurrence of any other abnormal test results such as T4 RIA, T3 RIA, FTI, Anti TPO, T3 Uptake.
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As a friendly text to anybody who reads this: I believe losing the inner peace and having worries, stress, and sadness is what you should omit from your life, and for me I think the start was because of two deaths and not accepting them. I asked my other friends and they also had some emotional experiences that led to their hyperthyroidism. A year after my RAI, I read a wonderful free ebook by Svetla Bankova which was about making balance in your life. I suggest you to read it and always find a way to make a peaceful relationship with any experience that you have not control over it, or in other cases do some action for that, and don't just hold it in your mind.