Fainted after week of extreme fatigue

[AnnaSo]

Hi all,

Reaching out to you as once again I lost faith in any help from medical practitioners.

I have been battling Hashimoto’s for 12 years. Been on Levo 150 for 10. In November 2017 Endo told me to reduce to 125 given high FT4 and my symptoms of fatigue, low libido, hair loss, weigh issues and (horrendous) water retention. She said this was as I was overmedicated. I though to myself, these look like hypo symptoms and given my blood results my T3 looks low and fever has been top range so maybe conversion issues but I was stupid and listed to her. In February, 3 months, circa 10kg and weeks of feeling awful later I did the panel again. My TSH went from suppressed to nearly 4, both FT4 and FT3 dropped. I was like, great! Thanks a million for that! I contacted her and she said to increase to 175, I though to myself, no thanks for your advice. I reached out to online forums and got advice to drop Levo to 100 and take 25 of T3 to boost them to to range. I followed that advice. Weeks went on with no effect really up to circa 10 days ago when I started to feel weaker and weaker. I have to say it was a very stressful time at work and at home too. Eventually I had to take time off work as was too tired to work and function. I returned to the office on Thursday and passed out at circa 12:30. I started to feel weaker and weaker, my started to race, my legs turned into jelly, I had extreme headache and started crying like a lunatic. I refused the ambulance, my boyfriend was summoned and the company driver took us to nearest GP practice. They run ECG which was fine. They blood sugar test which showed 3.1. They also took blood and said they would follow up with me the next day with results. On Friday, I had to chase them as no one was reaching out to me all day and I was obviously worried. Finally the nurse who was there on the day called saying all your results are fine so all good. I was like errmmm excuse me? Am I? Cos I fainted yesterday... if I was fine why was that? She said she wasn’t a doctor so she would not know. The told me the doc looked at the results and said all is fine. Sure, thanks mate!

I’m not a qualified medical practitioner but I’m also not oblivious to my condition and I know about the main peculiarities that surround Hashi. After couple of quick checks, my fainting symptoms and blood sugar of 3.1 suggested it could have been an episode of hypoglycaemia. Since the diabetes was ruled out through the blood test this could have been driven by low cortisol, I’ve read. The doctor was made aware I’ve been struggling with stress recently and battling thyroid for over 10 years - adrenals? From what I know adrenals and Hashimoto are close friends so this is how I’m connecting the dots at the moment. But he obviously did not bother checking or coming up with some sort of explanation on why this happened. Cos you know, I’m fine.

:((((

Anyone has any suggestions on the course of action here? I currently work and live in Sydney so on private health so can do check and doctor visits anytime easily. I have a regular GP open to helping me out so as soon as I figure what to do next I’m convinced he’d support the investigation.

[greygoose]

As I thought. Your FT3 is much too low, as is your B12, and either of those could be responsible for your fainting. You really need to increase your level of B12 to at last over 500.

Your FT4 is also a bit low, so you really need to increase your dose of levo. That way, we'll get a better idea of how well you convert. But, at the moment, it doesn't look too good.