From ThyroWorld, Volume 1, No. 1, Autumn, 1997

By Diana Hains Meltzer Abramsky, CM, BA

Before the summer of 1980 information about thyroid disorders, at least insofar as the Canadian lay person was concerned, was non-existent. For this newly diagnosed individual with a malfunctioning thyroid gland, it felt like a descent into a medical wasteland where fear, anger, and isolation were constant companions.

Nevertheless, despite these negative emotions, the frustrating bewilderment, the failure to understand the silence and mystery that seemed to prevail about thyroid disorders, I decided to go public. People needed to know about medical problems that took six years to be diagnosed - about the "all in your head" and "you need psychiatric evaluation" attitudes that were the usual experience of patients one met at thyroid clinics.

With encouragement from Dr. Jack Wall and W. W. Viner QC, a public meeting was organised to discuss the merits of forming a thyroid organisation whose purpose would be to learn and inform the public about the prevalence and nature of thyroid disorders. Informed patients would hopefully encourage their physicians to focus on the need to order thyroid function tests, sooner rather than later; to persuade their physicians to place thyroid gland investigation closer to the top rather than at or near the bottom of the medical investigation totem pole.

Thus in the summer of 1980, thyroid history was made in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. For the first time anywhere in the world, a public meeting was held, a committee was formed and on July 5, 1980 - a red-letter day - the official founding of the Thyroid Foundation of Canada took place at Kingston City Hall where a plaque recording the event was unveiled in June 1996.

In chapters across Canada, dedicated members of Thyroid Foundation of Canada accepted the challenge to end the strange silence and the casual attitude that had existed for centuries vis-a-vis thyroid disorders.

News of our existence spread across Canada by letters, word of mouth and numerous cross-country media reports. We were inundated with letters from despairing patients - parents, children and, yes even from teachers, nurses and physicians including a Health Sciences physician in Paraguay who requested our thyroid information for his medical students educational programs. It was a veritable avalanche of requests.

From these letters it was quite obvious that my vision - my dream of a world-wide thyroid organisation - was not far fetched. The information gap was not unique to Canada. It was a universal problem. Somehow hope and help had to be brought to people everywhere who were suffering from a malfunctioning thyroid gland.

A sense of purpose and involvement is shared by members of thyroid organisations being established around the world as well as via Thyroid Foundation of Canada's educational material available on the World Wide Web. Today Thyroid Federation International (TFI) is indeed offering that help and hope.

"How far that little candle sheds his beams!"

For her tireless efforts in establishing the Thyroid Foundation of Canada and in helping thyroid sufferers everywhere, with information and support, Diana Abramsky received the prestigious Order of Canada (CM) in 1990.