Cherisse Moe

When Crys­tel Clarke-Leza­ma was di­ag­nosed with hy­per­thy­roidism in 2018, she had a choice to make. She could let the dis­ease run her life or take ac­tion by ad­vo­cat­ing for ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion.

An ed­u­ca­tor and moth­er of two, she wrote Thy­ro and Thyra—The Thy­roid Twins. The in­ter­ac­tive sto­ry­book fol­lows two live­ly sib­lings as they deal with school, sports and doc­tor vis­its while find­ing ways to keep their faith and pri­ori­tise their well-be­ing.

It teach­es young read­ers how a small gland in the body can af­fect how they feel and grow. Thy­ro demon­strates an over­ac­tive thy­roid, while Thyra has an un­der­ac­tive one.

“I want­ed to make the sto­ry re­lat­able,” says the Cumana Vil­lage, To­co, na­tive. “It’s tar­get­ed to­wards chil­dren from Stan­dard Three to Five, as well as Forms One and Two. It was im­por­tant to show the char­ac­ters in every­day set­tings be­cause that is where lit­tle ones learn best. They see that kids fac­ing health hur­dles can still be ac­tive, en­er­getic, and thrive.”

Crys­tel’s symp­toms in­clud­ed swollen feet and neck, anx­i­ety, stress, lack of sleep, brit­tle nails, feel­ing cold when oth­ers were hot, and de­pres­sion. Some­one close to her no­ticed she wasn’t her­self and ad­vised her to seek ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion. That step saved her life.

“I went and did a blood test, and I fi­nal­ly got the an­swer that I had hy­per­thy­roidism,” she tells We Life and Cul­ture. “Af­ter re­cov­er­ing, I still have to mon­i­tor my blood every month. Read­ers should know that if they ex­pe­ri­ence any one of these symp­toms, please don’t di­ag­nose them­selves—they should get checked out.”

Thy­roid ed­u­ca­tion is per­son­al to the Cumana Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist teacher, but she al­so be­lieves the health is­sue isn’t spo­ken about near­ly enough here at home.

“With­out med­ical sup­port and a change in di­et, it can get out of hand and even be­come life-threat­en­ing. I do not want any child or par­ent to go through what I did, so I want peo­ple not to wait to seek care.”

Be­cause thy­roid dis­or­ders can run in fam­i­lies, Crys­tel, 34, has been open about the con­di­tion with her own chil­dren, aged four years and five months. She teach­es them to lis­ten to their bod­ies, man­age emo­tion­al ten­sion and speak up when some­thing feels un­usu­al.

Stud­ies in­di­cate that up to 60 per cent of those liv­ing with thy­roid con­di­tions re­main un­di­ag­nosed. Treat­ing the dis­or­der as an in­vis­i­ble ill­ness, she fo­cus­es on prop­er nu­tri­tion and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Since the book, which took her about five years to write, was pub­lished, the Bates Memo­r­i­al High and Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean grad­u­ate says par­ents, teach­ers, young peo­ple and even strangers have been reach­ing out to share their own jour­neys.

“I am al­so re­ceiv­ing many re­quests to bring Thy­ro and Thyra to schools for read­ings. Many peo­ple ask what I did to man­age it. I tell them that I over­hauled my lifestyle, kept my med­ical ap­point­ments, and trust­ed in God.”

Copies of Thy­ro and Thyra—The Thy­roid Twins are avail­able at se­lect book­stores and di­rect­ly from Crys­tel. Her next plan is to host an of­fi­cial book launch with lo­cal screen­ings in Jan­u­ary and main­tain mo­men­tum by vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties and health fa­cil­i­ties to high­light the im­por­tance of ear­ly de­tec­tion and how food im­pacts over­all health.

“It was re­al­ly through my sick­ness that I de­cid­ed I should write this book,” she says. “I said that if God can bring me through this, He cer­tain­ly can for any­one else. My goal is to keep the con­ver­sa­tion go­ing so peo­ple can be in­formed be­fore it’s too late.”

Side­bar: Un­der­stand­ing thy­roid health

What is the thy­roid gland? The thy­roid is a small, but­ter­fly-shaped or­gan lo­cat­ed at the base of the neck that pro­duces hor­mones con­trol­ling me­tab­o­lism, heart rate, body tem­per­a­ture and over­all growth.

Hy­per­thy­roidism vs hy­pothy­roidism:

Hy­per­thy­roidism (rep­re­sent­ed by Thy­ro): An over­ac­tive thy­roid gland that pro­duces ex­ces­sive hor­mone lev­els, ac­cel­er­at­ing the body’s me­tab­o­lism.

Hy­pothy­roidism (rep­re­sent­ed by Thyra): An un­der­ac­tive thy­roid gland that pro­duces in­suf­fi­cient hor­mone lev­els, slow­ing nor­mal body func­tions.

Key facts:

Women are five to eight times more like­ly than men to de­vel­op a thy­roid con­di­tion dur­ing their life­time.

A rou­tine TSH (thy­roid-stim­u­lat­ing hor­mone) blood test is a pri­ma­ry di­ag­nos­tic tool used to as­sess how well the gland is func­tion­ing.