Now they've diagnosed me under active, it's easier to understand this mood; everyday I swallow one small tablet which sometimes puts me off my favourite food. It seems this gene is honoured in my family, a treasured heirloom, with a secret past that echoes through the annals of our history; a thread that sometimes frays, but binds the last son and daughter to the first. I wonder now and then, how much of my own life time: the triumphs, travails, blessings, all the blunders might have played out different with Thyroxine. I realise now I'm further down the road, it's only wrinkled skin that makes you old.