I am new to this community, but already appreciate Barb135 and others!! I had a total thyroidectomy 16 yrs ago for metastatic papillary cancer, and struggled for the first several years with symptoms of fatigue, body aches, migraines, nausea, vestibular dizziness. I am a PT and needed to cut my hours. All my doctors just looked at my TSH levels and said I was "fine", or something else had to be causing my fatigue. After a few years a naturopath added some estrogen/progesterone and increased my Synthroid a bit....I felt much better, about 75% back to normal. I still had to be careful with my activity levels and not get over tired, but I could work, and manage my house/family. Last year a new endocrinologist said she wanted to lower my Synthroid since it had been a long time after my cancer, and she thought I would feel better with a slightly higher TSH. Wrong! I slowly felt worse and worse, fatigue and dizziness, which made me need to resign from my PT clinic a few months ago. A new/different doctor and increased my Synthroid and my Cytomel, but I really haven't felt better yet. It's as if my body cannot recover from being hypothyroid again last year. She wants to test me for Lyme and Vit D deficiency which is fine, but I still maintain it is my thyroid causing my symptoms. I am on 162 mcg Synthroid and just increased Cytomel to 20 mcg....any suggestions? My research (and this blog post) leads me to feel that slowly increasing my Cytomel may be the answer. Thanks so much!!
Thank you VTPT... It sounds like you've had a hard time of it... It might be better if you start another thread that includes your current thyroid hormone levels. You should be getting tested for Free T4 and Free T3, each time you have a TSH test. Be sure to include the reference ranges for any lab results you post, since reference ranges vary from lab to lab and have to come from your own reports.
Vitamin D is very important for the production and synthesis of thyroid hormones... I know you can't produce them, but your body would need vitamin D in order to process what you take. I'd surely let them go ahead and test vitamin D, if I were you.
Lyme disease is also, often connected to symptoms of hypothyroidism, and if there's a possibility you have it, you should have it ruled out. It, too, can affect processing of thyroid hormones, as can low vitamin B-12 and low iron. If you haven't had B-12 or ferritin tested, this would be a good time to do it.
You're already on a pretty high dose of cytomel (T3), which is a very potent hormone, so it's important to now what's going on before adding extra doses. There may be other factors involved, as well, though.
You can start another thread by clicking on the red "Post a Question" box at the top of this page.
Congrats Barb !! You've been a blessing to thyroid community, helping numerous members over the years, so grateful to have you. You are so appreciated. Wishing you all the best.
Barb, you bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to this Forum, and spend tons of time helping people with a wide variety of problems. Thanks for your dedication to helping others.
I tried to post the above once already. If this gets double posted then it is only appropriate, considering all the time you spend here. Thanks.
