After watching the One Show and then sitting chewing things over, a question popped into my head This is either a daft question or a valid question, just not sure what
So here goes
If the testing and prescribing of T3 is such a no go zone, why are the medical profession still putting patients forward for RAI treatment and thyroid gland removal???
We get offered RAI and removals when the gps/endos have no intention of prescribing the medicines we need after.
Am I barking up the wrong tree I ask myself
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Snoddyoddbod
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They think everybody does brilliantly on Levo. Everyone in this magical world has a perfectly functioning pituitary and a perfectly functioning hypothalamus and also everyone is a perfect converter from t4 to t3.
I'm sure they do. But the power in the patient/doctor relationship has always been with the doctor.
And for the doctors themselves there have always been the royal medical colleges, NICE, the BMA, the GMC and the government telling them what to do.
And for the above organisations there have always been the Pharma companies and the government pulling strings with one hand and dishing out dosh with the other.
We are patients and we don't count. And in the case of thyroid sufferers we are mostly women. And medical treatment has always been sexist. So they (the doctors) don't like listening to us.
Buma women are 5 to 8 times as likely to develop hypothyroidism. Women's health problems and symptoms are trivialised and explained away as neurotic or behavioural. Then when men are found to be hypo they are often treated like women, ie their suffering is minimised and/or they are denied effective treatments.
Yes, there would. Even in countries where T3 is a lot cheaper, doctors are loath to prescribe it. Probably because they don't understand it, they haven't learnt about it in med school - remember, if T3 were freely available, and people get well, Big Pharma would lose money. And, BP control what is taught in med school.
Here, in France, T3 is very cheap - something like 3.50 for 30 tablets, can't remember exactly - but in all of those doctors I've seen, none of them have proposed it. None of them have looked at my blood tests, where the lack of conversion is so obvious, and said oh! You need T3! I've always had to ask for it. And sometimes they will give it too me, and sometimes they won't, because they don't know what it is. One endo said to me : 'you can have it if you want it, but it won't do you any good'. That, was not a financial problem, that was a problem with ignorance!
I think there's a quote on STTP, where one doctor said to a patient 'God never gave anyone a faulty pituitary' - or something like that. lol And, that is just typical of the Endo Attitude.
That was why when the other day it was suggested to complaine if on T3 I suggested we should all complain as down the line we don't know where we will be and what we will be needing.
GP's and endocrinologists state the mantra that Levothyroxine (T4) is the best treatment option because they only go by blood tests for a diagnosis and not the patients symptoms and, if they deviate from standard practice they get investigated and struck off and can no longer practice.
Plus, T4 is very cheap to manufacture and only costs the NHS about £1.30 for 28 days supply. Very cheap when the cost of T3 is in the hundreds of pounds.
Thus, this all boil downs to cost. The cost to the NHS and the cost to the practitioners pay packet and lifestyle.
It's not just T3! I've had a thyroidectomy and RAI. When T3 and T4 and combination of both didn't work for me, I went in to my consultants office expecting to be tested for the next level of thing that might be wrong and solution that might be found.
And of course there were no more tests and no more questions asked. They just shrugged shoulders and that was that.
In fact my endocrinologist knows about 3 sentences worth of knowledge about how to treat thyroids. She doesn't really even understand T3 or the free T3 test. She also doesn't even mind admitting it! When I was asking for a referral to Addenbrooke's she chuckled and told me that of course there are no thyroid specialists in our city. Not as if it was any big deal, but just an amusing fact of life that I have had a completely non-standard response to treatment, and will not be offered a specialist in thyroid to look at it!
Like you, I do feel quite shocked that they have put me in this position completely intentionally, but have no way to treat me.
It is rather ironic that the preparation for RAI involves the patient in taking T3 rather than levo as, due to the short life of T3, it enables the radiologists to better calculate the amount of RAI to be given to perform its job. Otherwise it would necessitate the patient to withhold their daily levo for a much longer time.
The doctors who treat us have been taught information that doesn't work for all of us, and they are unaware of the research that shows why some of us don't do so well.
I feel sure that they believe they are correct - and of course that makes many of us a real pain in the neck.
May we all continue to be a pain in the neck - ramping up the pain all the time - until they feel our pain and start to learn the facts that we already know!!!
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