Sunday, September 6, 2015

My thyroid numbers and medicine changes

First, let me start off by saying how great I've been feeling!  I think having my thyroid removed is a huge part of why I'm feeling so great!  For years I had a suspicion that a good majority of my medical issues were because of a faulty thyroid - even though the blood work always came back "fine" I knew things were not "fine" and now that I have been without my thyroid for a good 2 months I really believe that the be the case.

After my surgery, I started on 150 mg of Synthroid.  I had my blood drawn on Aug 8th and it came back with a low TSH of 0.028 - the normal range is 0.0450-4.5000 so my Dr lowered my dose to 137 mg.  What I find most interesting though is that my other numbers are significantly higher than they have ever been.  Prior to my surgery and going on the medication my numbers were always in the low range of normal.

Before my surgery, my numbers were:

TSH - 0.749 (within the normal range)
T4 or Thyroxine - 5.4
T3 Uptake - 30
Free T4 1.6

My most recent numbers show improvement and I'm sure why I feel so much better:

TSH - 0.028 (according to my Dr, the number being so low means I have high thyroid hormone which could cause heart problems and why she wanted to lower my medication dose)
T4 -9.8 (up significantly since starting thyroid medication)
T3 Uptake - 34
Free T4 - 3.3

You will see an increase in all the hormones which makes me even more certain that the lower numbers were causing much of my fatigue, fibromyalgia pain and overall lack of being healthy in general.  I would argue with anyone who says otherwise considering that it's the only thing that has changed in my life and the result is me feeling like a "normal" person most of the time now.

I will go in and have my numbers checked again later this month or early October to see how the medication adjustment has changed the numbers.  I was really worried that dropping the dose of my medication would significantly effect me but so far things seem fine.

On another note, I've lost 18 lbs in the last 3 months.  I'm on a mission to lose another 40 to get back to where I was before getting sick.  With the new found energy I have, I'm able to get myself to the gym a few days a week to lift weights.  I'm really pleased with the changes that I'm starting to see overall.

That's it for this update - I just wanted to be sure to update my numbers and share my success thus far since Surgery - it's really just been about 9 weeks since the surgery but so far everything is going really good.

Until next time - to your health!