THYROID PROBLEMS?

MrsO - belatedly - what a horrible experience being dug out to look after such a poorly-feeling and large son! I do hope you are feeling less stressed and he is feeling less grotty. I don't think there is a worse feeling than that of nausea.

MrsO and mollycoo - I suspect there isn't a name in the book that can't be shortened or, if its something like Ian (which defies logic to shorten it), someone at some point will find something else to call them! The Ian I was at Uni with was yonnie (don't ask, there was a logic on the part of the guys who dreamt it up :lol: ). My cousin was James all his life (at pain of death or excommunication from the family) until he went to work somewhere or other - and suddenly accepted Jim!

My family called me Eily - I saw a distant cousin a few years ago and she called me it. At last I was big girl enough to tell her how much I had always hated it :roll: - she was amazed!

Hope you're all doing well - even with the change in the weather

EileenH

Oh dear

Just managed to make it on here, so so sorry to read your problems. Mine pale into insignificance when children, of whatever age, are involved.

Take care Mrs O

LOL

Hi all,

Isn't it funny how names get changed :roll:.

My late Dad always called me Mick....because I constantly ran after a work colleague of his as a small child saying \"where's Mick\".

My Dad's best friend called me \"wingy\" until he died as I always asked him to give me a swing but missed out the \"S\"....his family STILL call me by that name even though he died several years ago :lol:

My Mum has been called \"girlie\" all her life, although her name is Anna...she was the only daughter in her household :wink:

I always call my hubby by his full name of Michael...but to his Irish workmates he is Mick and to the Americans he is Mike :roll: ....so I get 3 men for the price of one :lol: 8)

My Mum had 2 aunts who were called Cinnie and Wennie....not as one might think Cynthia and Gwendoline.....their real names were Esther and Elizabeth :roll: ....so where the nicknames came from is anybody's guess

The strange thing looking at my family, is that it was always the females who were given a \"pet\" name, as any male nicknames were well known abbreviations of their full name :?:

It's a wonder we didn't all end up with a major identitiy crisis :lol: :wink:

Love to all, Pauline

Thanks MrsK and Eileen (was tempted to write \"Eily\"!!!!! :wink: ) for your kind thoughts. Only consolation......I found out how to shed the weight!!! :roll: :wink:

[color=darkblue:8e17504896]Pauline[/color:8e17504896] - I was fascinated by all your family nicknames! :lol: Being married to a Michael/Mike/Mick (family from Limerick) I, too, got 3 men for the price of one! :lol: My name has always been shortened from Shirley to Shirl by all my family - when my dear Mum used to call out \"Shirley\" I knew I was in trouble! :roll:

MrsO

Due to second marriages etc. it became quite difficult for 'step' kids to know what to call my Mum. In the end she became 'The Duchesss' and it stayed with her till the end. She loved it :jester: (nearest I can find to royalty!!!) For reasons known only to himself, my Dad called me Lizzie Tin Drawers all my life (try living with that in front of friends and family :lol: )

Lizzie xx

Hello all on what I hope is the start of a comfortable weekend for everyone. :goodluck:

Well my thyroid is not the culprit - blood tests confirmed that as normal.

MRI of neck and pharynx also showed up no inflammation in the swollen glands or an answer for my dry mouth Now they want to send me for a CT scan to check the \"root of the neck\" where they thought they could see some inflamed lymph tissue but the MRI didn't go down far enough! :?

When I mentioned that the GP had put the possibility of Sjogren's into the mix, the Dr at the hospital remarked that the swellings weren't in the right place and I didn't have the right symptoms. I asked \"what symptoms - I've got swollen glands and a dry mouth\", at which she said I hadn't mentioned the dry mouth at the previous appointment because it wasn''t down on her list of my symptoms! I felt I had mentioned that and in any case thought my GP may have put it in the initial letter. She walked over to the basin saying \"I do my best\". :roll:

I know it might seem lucky to be going through this battery of tests but I am more than a little worried about all the radiation in such a short space of time; firstly the whole head dental X-ray, then the MRI and now the CT scan - not to the mention 4 X-rays at the new dentist! Why they want to include the abdomen and pelvis in the CT scan, goodness knows! I also went through a load of CT scans five years ago when my then rheumatologist failed to diagnose PMR!

I did eventually ask if I could have a blood test for Sjogren's which I knew were available although only positive in about 50% - they are antibody tests and I now await the results of those.

Sooooo, I've now arranged a private consultation back with the rheumy wondering if he can perhaps rule out Sjogren's before I go through the CT scan and another follow-up appointment with the lady \"doing her best\" but someone certainly isn't doing their best with the amount of administrative errors and inconvenience I am encountering along the way! :roll: I really do hope I am just being unlucky and that others are not encountring similar experiences which in my case are probably the cause of my local hospital merging with the now larger one further away. However, I suspect I am not along......my dentist yesterday mentioned that her local hospital in Sussex had lost the test results for her son. :roll:

To end on a good note, at least my PMR and GCA are behaving themselves (hope I wont regret saying that!) and will get rheumy's advice the week after next on whether or not to start reducing from 1mg - watch this space! :lol:

MrsO

You are certainly still having problems Mrs O !!

I was ( not being big headed !! ) extremely competent when I was at work and get very annoyed with incompetence and constant \" administrative errors \" !! Someone I worked with is now doing part time in a very large NHS hospital and she has got hold of this department and given it a good shake up and she cant believe the waste and headless chicken way they operate and they cant believe what she has achieved in a short space of time !! Part of her job is organising a course everyone has to attend and she said hardly anyone would turn up and not advise they werent coming !!! So she then advised all head of departments that a fine of £50 would be levied ( taken of their budget ) each time this happened and now everyone advises if they arent coming !! She even had Consultants coming up to her saying well done !!

It is difficult to remember all your symptoms when you go for these appointments and surely as with PMR you dont necessarily have all symptoms Recently my sister in law saw some of her notes when she had a hospital appointment and it said \"drug induced \" ( prescription I can assure you ) !! and it does make you wonder what comes first with all these things

Personally I do do as much internet research as I can Im not trying to treat myself !! but I do think it helps and at least you know if you arent getting the right check ups

Pleased you are keeping your reductions down even though you have had such a lot of problems of late and lets hope they sort this other one out shortly

Best wishes

Mrs G

Oh dear Mrs O. It just seems to go on and on doesn't it? Sadly, paying for a private consultation often does the trick. That's how I came to be diagnosed and treated so quickly with PMR. I have a bartering system with myself (I know, I'm a bit daft!! :weird When I'm deciding whether to spend some money I evaluate it with time in a nursing home :lol: . A cruise = 6 days in a nursing home. Trip to Spain = 3 days. Private consultation with my Rhuemy = less than an hour in a nursing home!! I told you I was daft!! It just puts things into perspective (and I can work out how long I'll have to pay for my old age before the state steps in!!!) Anyway, enough of my nonsense, I do hope you get sorted really soon. Have a lovely weekend, we've got sunshine here in Basingstoke (or Braisingsteak as my daughters like to call it!).

Love from Lizzie xx

MrsO - there is no need to worry about \"radiation exposure\" at all. I just went to check with my husband I wasn't about to say the wrong thing (he was head of medical physics in his former life which is the department that provides the people responsible for radiation monitoring within the NHS).

There is NO radiation exposure at all when you have an MRI as it is a completely different science behind the procedure. CT scans are also relatively low exposure levels and not something that we (in the UK at least) are likely to experience very often. It's a different thing in the USA where they send you for a CT at the drop of a hat at any age in the CMA (cover my a**) form of medicine often practised there. However, you can have 8 or 9 CTs in a year before getting to the level allowed per year in the US for anyone working with radiation (i.e. in hospitals) and who could be expected to work there all their life. Your dental x-rays each exposed you to a similar amount of extra radiation to eating 50 bananas! Or sleeping next to someone for a couple of years!

Not wanting to be hurtful :wink: :lol: but we are all now of an age where it is less of a problem in terms of radiation exposure anyway. It is accumulated dose that is important and a moderately high level every day over a year or two is far more dangerous than a high level for seconds once or twice. And the real dangers come when you are exposed to a massive dose in a short period of time as is the case for the Japanese workers at present. What we might possibly experience from Japan is a form of radiation (iodine) which halves in amount every 8 days - at a level which has been diluted many many times during its journey round the world on the wind. The longterm risk to us is miniscule.

Last week we were sent a superb file with comparative levels of radiation compiled by a medical physics safety officer after the media headline scare stories about the raised levels found in Glasgow and Oxford. The raised levels were relative to \"normal background\" (which is very low) and they had a set of other events that we meet every day which expose us to \"extra\" radiation that we don't worry about. Like the bananas, your bed partner, living in a brick or concrete building, flying the Atlantic (or anywhere else for that matter), visiting somewhere like Colorado or living in Aberdeen where the background levels are naturally much higher than out in the country. Or the lovely new granite worksurfaces in the kitchen! One guy had been at a meeting and went for a curry afterwards. They were talking about Japan and this \"30x normal\" media hype so he got his \"counter\" out of the boot and demonstrated background counts and then went round the kitchen. The enamel sink sent the machine into an apparent frenzy compared to \"background\".

So you can have your CT which can show a lot of things, not just the Sjogrens as is the case with the blood test which, as you say, isn't 100% anyway, without worrying. That is the advantage of the CT - it can show things other tests won't and all at one go. A \"trunk\" CT is a normal procedure - you aim for the bit of body where the problem might be and the MRI went so far down, just not far enough in this case. But if they just did a bit more with the CT and then found it showed the edge of something they'd need to go back, another visit for you, another appointment for them, in total more radiation than doing the whole lot at once. There are hospitals in the US where patients get such a CT on a regular basis - every couple of years or so - as a \"check-up\", looking for the beginnings of serious illnesses. It does the same job as a load of the screening tests they keep talking about here - blood tests, urine tests, poo tests!

When I went to the rheumy I sat down at the computer beforehand and wrote a list of my symptoms, drugs and a history of the ailment, ch

Thank you Eileen and thanks to hubby for his input as well. The total amount of radiation in a very short space of time has been a concern but also I have the concern of not being able to have the contrast (dye) that is given with CT scans and sometimes with MRI because of my decreased sole kidney function. In spite of the medics being aware of this I was still presented with a form to sign for the contrast at the MRI! :roll: It's probably a case of information not being passed as it should. I will probably be faced with the same situation with the CT scan. The Doc at the hospital did say that the amount of radiation for the scan would be no more than a 4 hour flight across the atlantic - I'd prefer the flight!!! :wink:

Both CT and MRI scans are often done with no contrast - I didn't have any for mine. It depends what they are looking for. There is also a range of various contrast media nowadays, some of which can actually be used with care in patients with kidney problems if their scan does need contrast for what is being looked for. What is important is that you always tell everyone yourself, as I'm sure you do, and it is often a good idea to call the unit at the hospital a week or so ahead and check with someone - not just the secretary - that they know you are not supposed to have contrast media and why. This gives them a chance to think about it in advance and make sure they aren't wasting your time and theirs by you arriving and them not having the right stuff available.

You were probably given the form to read and sign because nowadays the technician doing the test has a protocol to follow and has to tick all the boxes as having done that bit of the recipe or they will be disciplined if it is found not to have been done. Of course, WE all know it is quite easy to tick a box even without having done it but there you are, managers with clipboards wil be managers with clipboards. :wink: :roll: Maybe the patient should be given the protocol too and asked to tick the boxes as well!

EileenH