What to do?

[secret_sense]

Hello, I am new here. I do not quite know what to do. I was diagnosed with Hashimotos in my home country germany 8 years ago. Since i came to the UK (for my lovely partner who I will marry next week tuesday) i have not been able to get a prescription for L-thyroxine. My GP did a TSH blood test which came back normal with 3,39. She decided no action needed to be taken and was a bit dismissive. I have since requested my last blood tests from germany with the TPO level of over 600. It seems my TSH level went down a bit from over 6. Although my german gp said this was a value that varies over the day. Lately I have had joint pains, dizziness and strong depressions and I am not sure what to do. Can I trust the GP that everything is fine even if it doesnt feel like it?

[trelemorele]

Are you underactive due to Hashi?

Are you or have you been taking any medication for underactive thyroid sourced from Germany?

It seems to be very common that if you haven't bern diagnosed in the UK they won't treat you.

If you're not hypo in UK, they won't prescribe ANY medication. More over if you are hypo but not enough for them they don't want to prescribe.

You may have to wait till.Your levels go very bad or get the medication from your home country.

If you have decent GP he may acknowledge your foreign diagnosis and medicate. If he isn't decent doctor (most likely) he'll ignore you.

And no, you cannot trust UK GPs. They're poorly educated, not interested, often governed by inadequate procedures written by people without knowledge in that particular field and based on cost only rather than improvement of health, won't use creative thinking and logic.

[LAHs]

I am not sure if you can do this in the UK but there are many reputable web sites that sell thyroid meds via the Internet but they will ask for a prescription. Can you ask the German doc to write such a prescription? You may then legally buy it from such a supplier. You might want to get a full thyroid panel from a private company, I think it is Horizon in the UK, just to confirm your condition. Have a look at your Free T3, Free T3, TSH and antibodies to confirm hypothyroidism. TSH varying between 3 and 6 should have convinced your doc you needed at least a starter dose of Levo (50mcg). If you choose to go it alone you might want to look into NDT - but see how you do on Levo first, if Levo works it's simpler.

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to LAHs]

If you have a German prescription, you can use it in most UK pharmacies (subject to their willingness to co-operate). So long as it is written to European cross-border prescription standards.

[LAHs in reply to helvella]

Good, that's even easier and I thought that might be the case, thanks.