I’ve not written much for this blog lately. Everything had been pretty much the same and I didn’t want to keep complaining and people get fed up with hearing it.
I lost a lot of motivation for everything when I couldn’t complete the trial for the new drug for Graves’ disease as I have been really struggling with carbimazole and also getting a response or help from my endocrinologist so the clinical trial did seem like my only hope to actually get real knowledgeable help.
I have known my dose for carbimazole wast to high for me for a long time but I’m not a doctor and no one was listening to me. After about 3-4 weeks being on the 10mg dose I was getting symptoms of an underactive thyroid. I was losing my hair even more, my skin was dry and constantly sore, my moods are low and despite eating a calorie controlled diet and exercising, I was still putting on weight, and by exercising I don’t mean just doing a group fitness class once a week, I’ve been weight training five times a week, doing HIIT seven times per week, pole training three times and then stretching as often as I can. And on top of that my heart rate has been lower than normal and I’ve been permanently knackered and cold!
My shockingly slow muscle recovery (another fun side effect of an underactive thyroid) has also meant I’ve been in permanent pain to so stretching properly has been almost impossible for the last two weeks.
Oh and before anyone suggests it, I haven’t been in starvation mode from doing to much and eating to little, that’s not a real thing and has been debunked by science. I have put on weight because my metabolism is non existent because my thyroid function has been restricted to much from medication. And I haven’t been overtraining, I have had adequate recovery days and have factored in deload weeks. I’ve been doing everything by the book.
So anyways, for the last couple of months I’ve been asking for my carbimazole to be reduced. I had to fight to get my blood tests and until the thyroid function tests were consistently low my endocrinologist wasn’t prepared to reduce my dose. Which I can understand. It just didn’t really work that way as I could never get hold of him to get new blood forms or to discuss my results. So its been a long drawn out process and the last few months haven’t been fun. I put in a PALS complaint two weeks ago and since then, I can’t fault the endocrine team, I’m finally getting answers.
I had a blood test last week and my endocrinologist asked me call an notify his secretary after I’d had it done so they could look out for the results. However they also told me that if they didn’t get the results by Friday evening then they were on leave for Christmas. So when I couldn’t get hold of my endocrinologist secretary on Friday evening, I assumed I would need to wait til after Christmas. And in all honesty I was really stressing out about feeling like this over Christmas
I was also worried about my results not being consistent as we have had a stressful few weeks and there were several days I had forgotten to take my medication at all and other days when I had taken it late.
But today I got a call from my local GP surgery who had received a letter from the endocrinologist requesting I reduce the dose of my carbimazole to 5mg, so I’m assuming the blood results last week showed exactly what I expected them to, that my thyroid function is still to low. And I am stupidly excited. I know it’s going to take a while for my T4 levels to increase and for my metabolism and everything else to start returning to normal but I can’t wait to start having more energy again and hopefully being in a better frame of mind over Christmas.
AerialEmma 