Commun ty Matters Clay Center Presbyterian Manor
What everyone 50+ should know about their thyroid
By Gayle Golden Catherine Horvath, 51, was feeling no symptoms five years ago when her doctor ordered a routine blood test to check, among other things, how her thyroid was doing. (Your thyroid is the butterfly-shaped gland low in your neck that influences metabolism, growth and development and body temperature.) The results showed astoundingly low levels of thyroid hormone — a sign her thyroid function was, as she puts it, “pretty close to being nonexistent.” If untreated, she was at risk not only for bothersome symptoms but for other serious diseases as well. The fix was simple: One pill a day to replace the thyroid hormone she wasn’t making. Within a year, Horvath’s levels were back to normal.
Former teacher shares one-room schoolhouse memories
August 2015
Horvath is one of the estimated 24 to 28 million Americans who likely have some form of thyroid disease, many of whom develop the disorder later in life.Yet according to American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, nearly half of those with thyroid disease don’t know they have it or are misdiagnosed. That’s because thyroid disease — particularly among older adults, when
No matter your environment, teaching isn’t an easy profession. Especially when you’re Edna Rogge started teaching in the in a one-room school house where you’re early 1940s in a one-room school. not only in charge of instilling an education in the minds of children of various ages, but you’re also in charge of hauling the coal to warm the building. “Sometimes, I would just sit down and cry,” said Edna Rogge. Edna was a teacher in a one-room school house during the early 1940s. “I took normal training in my senior year, and I went to summer school at KState to get my certificate. Everything was so easy for me at K-State. It was just a repeat of what I had had my senior year. When I got my certificate to teach, I showed it to the high school principal. He said, ‘You’ll never get to teach at a school around here.’ I asked why and he said that the Lutherans wouldn’t hire a Catholic. I needed to teach class close to Palmer, so I applied at Spring Creek. They were all Lutherans and they hired me right away. They were always so nice to me,” said Edna. She taught two eighth graders, one sixth grader, three fifth graders and three first graders, “The thing I remember the most was trying to bring up the big chunks of coal to carry into the schoolhouse to stoke the fire. That was so hard, but I especially liked the teaching first graders. I thought their books were so boring, so I asked them to read the newspaper and to bring something to school to read to me. I remember a boy named Jerry Taylor got so good at reading the paper. His mother said she had never had one of her kids able to read the newspaper in the first grade,” Edna said. She also has fond memories of the Christmas program they put on every year. “It was a big event for everybody in the neighborhood. I hung a sheet for a stage and half way through the program the wire broke and the sheets came
THYROID continued on page 3
TEACHING on page 3
A common disease