Well! All I can say is I feel your pain. Reading all th...

Well! All I can say is I feel your pain. Reading all these comments made me feel as if I was finally talking to people who know what it is like to try to understand this mysterious illness. I do wish I could get all of you in to see my new endocronologist. I can relate to something in almost every comment. I had my thyroid removed when I was 19 because of cancer and have been on thyroid ever since. I am now 47. I went through 9 years of infertility and 3 miscarriages before I got lucky with invitro and enough thyroid to get the pregnancies to term. I have been mostly hypo during these almost 30 years and bounce back and forth between hyper and hypothyroid. Knowing all the symptoms you would think I would have recognized the need for more thyroid, but 5 months ago I went to the GP with shortness of breath and heart palpitations. A blood test determined I was on too much thyroid, so I thought "OK,case closed, for now" knowing it can bounce around. I began to get strange symptoms within a few weeks. Of course the fatigue and brittle hair and slight weight gain, but also angioadema (swolen tongue), feeling of choking and numbness in toes and hands, dizziness and blurry vision, muscle spasms and tremors and more. I had never had these symptoms before so didn't know what to blame them on. At first my GP, who is really a PA was very much my advocate and concerned and helpful. I went to her office over a 5 month period in varying degrees of panic thinking I had everything from MS to a possible ministroke. MY speech patterns were stuttery and garbled at times and the swolen tongue nearly drove me insane. After going to ENT's and getting observed with the swolen tongue and told I had angioadema, there was still no reason why or treatment. I was told it was probably stress and to relax. Finally the PA was beyond her ability to help me and said go to the GP here because he is really good. HA! On the first visit he barely looked at me never felt my neck or looked at my tongue and asked me as he flipped through my file and listened to me catalog my symptoms if I had been abused! Yeah, I was shocked and angry and asked him why he would ask me that and he just cavalierly said, Oh when someone has as many symptoms as you and nothing is wrong, it's often abuse. Unbelievable. I tried to understand that maybe it was his job to ask that question, but the more I thought about it the angrier I got. He was not looking out for me or trying to help me, time to move on. About that time I also suddenly developed welts on my left underarm. I went back to the PA who I liked and she looked at me like I was just too much trouble. I then asked for my records and left that practice. The next day I had finally gotten in for my first follow up with the new endocronologist and almost cancelled because I was so disgusted with doctors in general. I had gone in her lab the week before for bloods and never thought about this being related to thyroid. The minute she came in the room and opened my file she looked at me and said, "Wow, you are on 150mg of synthroid and you are exremely hypothyroid! How are you feelilng?" I just burst into tears and said I have been so sick and no one is listening to me or trying to fix it and I have been at the end of my rope and now I have adema in my arm and both thighs. I cataloged all my symptoms from swolen tongue to speech problems to the welts and she said I had been on about 30mg too low for 5 months and all the symptoms were a result of that and maybe some estrogen deficiency also(Did I tell you I had a total hysterectomy 2 years ago and went off my estrogen patch because the ENT thought my problems might be the estrogen ? I will never listen to a GP or anyone else but an endocronologist about my thyroid ever again. I uppped my dose to175mg and I may need more. Went back on the estrogen patch and am tryting to be patient. She said I won't be right again for about 6 weeks. I am feeling better already and each day it is better. Don't give up out there. And don't let any doctor throw antidepressants and anxiety meds at you when YOU know it's something else. Be you own advocate and keep going til you find the right doctor, even if you must go out of town. Good Luck to all, I'll leave an update.

[i:025798b26e]This message was automatically imported from the original Patient Experience[/i:025798b26e]

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