Thyroidectomy and low sex drive in husband

Hello.  My husband is 39 years old and was diagnosed almost one year ago w/ thyroid cancer.  He had a complete thyroidectomy and then did one treatment of radiated iodine 5 months ago.  He went back for a check up the first of Feb and the endocrinologist increased his synthroid based on his symptoms and numbers (I'm not sure exactly what they were).  Since the beginning of Jan, my husband has been in an intensive training course w/ the military which has pretty much consumed all of his time, and I know that he is being pushed to the extremes right now w/ the stress of this course, still trying to recover from the treatment, and trying to regulate thyroid numbers.  He gets in bed at night, is passed out by 10 pm and has no interest in sex at all anymore, even on the weekends which was normally our time to reconnect.  I practically have to beg him, or he ignores my advances to initiate and then when we do have sex I feel like it's just guilt sex and it's not enjoyable. We've always had a fairly healthy sex life and it's really odd that he would be acting this way.  I should also mention that we are expecting our 4th child in 6 weeks, so I know that is also causing stress for him.  I don't want to pressure him, so I've laid off and will let him come to me when he's ready.  I am trying not to take this  personally because I can see that he is under a lot of pressure, but it is offensive to me that he wouldn't turn to me when he is feeling so bad.   How long should we expect it to take to get his thyroid levels regulated, and at what point do we talk to the dr about this?  Are there other hormone levels that they should be testing for?    Thanks for your time.

[Mark Lupo, M.D.]

This may be multifactorial.  From a thyroid standpoint, the first goal is to get the dose appropriate to keep TSH in the low normal range.  Sometimes, the addition of cytomel  (T3)is useful, but this is only in a subset of patients (about 20% or less).

[masutka]

I have the same problem since the thyroidectomy.

[bali864]

A related discussion, my thyroid gland is removed. was started.