Thyroid starting to play up now!

[Kelfreem]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone can help. My current "official" diagnosis is undifferentiated connective tissue disease, but my rheumatologist strongly believes it to be lupus, which has not quite fully shown yet. Anyway I have numerous problems and like everyone on here I am going through a pretty rough time. I'm already on hydroxy 400 mgs a day and have now started azathioprine which has just been increased to 100 mgs a day. Anyway I've not been too well recently, I thought i was flaring or it was the new mefication, so anyway i decided to ask the gp to check my thyroid along with my other bloods that I'm having due to the medication. It turns out my thyroid stimulating hormone (tsh) is raised and now high, and my t4 (thyroxine level) is very low and has dropped significantly since when ever they tested it last. My gp has stated that I will probably need to go on thyroxine for an under active thyroid very soon, but my t4 levels are not quite within treatment range at present, needs to drop another 2 points, but very nearly there. He wants to re test this in 3 months. My question and concern is, is 3 months too long to wait for it to drop further when I already feel awful? Does anyone have any advice on this? Or know how long it will take to drop if my thyroid is already not working very well. Thanks in advance x

[loopy-lou]

Hi, All I know is that you can feel very ill with an underactive thyroid. Mine was diagnosed 20 years ago before lupus came along. I have taken 150mg of thyroxine daily ever since. I know in the States they use a slightly different range for testing than here in the UK. Mine is now checked approximately every 6 months. I remember how I felt 20 years ago and had the same exhaustion/fatigue as I now get with lupus - it was near impossible to even climb stairs. Perhaps worth going back before 3 months and saying you cannot go on feeling so ill and please can they re-check the levels. Sorry I cannot be of more help. Hope you get it sorted soon.x

[Kelfreem in reply to loopy-lou]

Thank you for your reply, yeah I was thinking maybe I should go back sooner, this blood test was 2 weeks ago now and I am so exhausted, I can't do anything and I'm off work sick (again), I just can't function at all, unfortunately I'm quite unwell with the the connective tissue disease as well, so I'm not sure what exactly is making me so unwell or if it's a bit of both, i'm really struggling at the moment though xx