Graves Disease?

Question

I was diagnosed with Graves Disease last Friday.  I'm wondering if maybe my Endo is wrong.  I don't feel sick really. There is no one in my family that has ever had thyroid problems. My Mom said maybe my Grandmother did.- she said she drank some stuff that turned her red and the doctor told her she had thyroid problems( that doesn't sound like anyt thyroid issue I've read about.)  I took the thyroid scan but wasn't given the results. These are the levels they gave me for my blood test FT4 = 4.76, T3= 1655pg/dL and TSH = <0.05.  Does anyone know what these mean?  I was too afraid to go through with the RAI, so my Endo said we would try Methimazole 20mgs a day.  Is that an accurate does?  Can I ruin my liver with this stuff?   I just want to know what people think. I would appreciate any advise.

GravesLady · Answer

Your name says it all.

 A high T-3 means T3-thyrotoxicosis.
T3 thyrotoxicosis is a common occurrence in hyperthyroidism caused by Graves’ disease and also toxic multinodular goiter. 
You will need one of the three treatment options because T3-thyrotoxicosis can cause serious health damage.

skymax2000 · Answer

What symptoms did you go to the doc for? Personally, if you don't feel sick it might be best to get a second opinion on whether you have to take the med or not.

DLA · Answer

Just wanted to ditto everything Rayne said.  Just be sure to watch the liver levels as the anti-thyroid meds do damage.
Dac

rayneweather · Answer

Based upon your tsh you are definitely hyper.  I honestly don't know much about the FT4 and T3 so I'd rather let someone else answer that than to give you the wrong answer.  What the low tsh means is that there is too much thyroid hormone in your body.  The pituitary gland is in charge of telling the thyroid when to start making thyroid hormone & when to stop by putting out more or less tsh (thyroid stimulating hormone) which does exactly what its name is.  If you have too much thyroid hormone in your body the pituitary gland stops spitting out the tsh in an effort to get the thyroid to stop making so much thyroid hormone.  Most times this works *except* in cases where the thyroid is being attacked by the immune system (such as Grave's disease) or there are nodules within the thyroid itself that are spewing out the extra hormone (they don't listen to the pituitary gland).  Did the endo do any thyroid antibodies?  They are often used to determine whether the cause of the hyperthyroidism is from nodules or Grave's disease.  If the immune system is out of whack & attacking the thyroid then the antibody levels will be screwed up.

Re: RAI vs. meds.  If you're not having many, or any, symptoms then trying meds is appropriate, I think.  There is a percentage of the hyper population that go into remission (meaning their hyperthyroidism goes away) after being on meds for a year or so.  A majority of those that do go into remission come back out of remission at some point (like myself) but there are those that never are bothered with it again.  RAI is a big deal and you have to become quite hypoactive before it can be started and many doctors require that you go on a low iodine diet as well (which is pretty bad from what I've heard).  And according to my endo some people w/ Grave's can actually get worse after RAI - instead of killing the thyroid it somehow makes the immune system work even harder.  That's one of the reasons I elected for a thyroidectomy (that and I had a visible goiter and many nodules that they couldn't say w/ 100% certainty weren't cancerous).

20mg is not a horrendously high dose of methimazole.  My last dose was 5mg which was considered an extremely low dose and I believe I had been on 20 or 30mg previously.  There are potential liver side effects from the methimazole but as long as you watch for symptoms and get your liver checked if you have any concerns then it's not a major barrier to taking the medicine.

So that's my advice :-)  Oh, and my final piece that I always give.  Please make sure your endo is someone who treats a lot of people with thyroid problems.  There are many endos out there that treat mainly diabetics and don't know how best to treat thyroid patients (I found that out the hard way as did a number of people on here).  If you would like to know if any of us have an endo we'd recommend just let us know where in the world you live and we'll try out best to help out.  Welcome to the board.

Rayne

Graves Disease?

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