Hi everyone, I hope you're well. Thank you for all your compassionate responses to my last post - as always, I really appreciate everything you all have to say to me, even if I don't always respond beyond giving comments a 'heart'. I've had a strange update on my thyroid stuff since writing that post, so I thought it'd make more sense to write a new one to get anyone who's interested up to speed...
Yesterday, I received a rather confused/panicked call from the registrar while I was out for a walk in town. He called to inform me that, to both of our surprise, instead of having bloods showing that I was heavily over-replaced on so much thyroid hormone (levo 150, T3 10 for a month, before I became fed up with feeling hypo and started taking the full 20mcg pill daily instead...) rather, my bloods showed that I am more hypo than I've ever been since the thyroidectomy. I'm not sure if I heard him correctly, but apparently my TSH is at a whopping 27 (I hope I heard that wrong), while both my T3 and T4 readings are close to the bottom of the range (I don't remember specific figures, but will soon find out once his letter comes in the post. I think T3 is higher than T4 for once, though).
He initially suggested that it must be the T3 that did this, so I have to come off it immediately. I told him that I respectfully can't see how that would be the case? I haven't noticed that I'm hypo at all - I sleep well, I can stay awake all day, my weight (while a couple kilos higher than I'd like) is somewhat stable...granted I don't feel "great", but I am better at least, so how? Besides, I really don't want to go back to how I felt on T4 only right before I start my Masters degree. I reminded him that I have relatively recently been on antibiotics for my gut (remember when I said that he totally ignored me when I told him about my gut issues and subsequent treatment on Monday?). He calmed down a bit and started acting as though he'd known that all along, and like he was the one who made the suggestion that the antibiotics could have screwed with my absorption (despite him rudely and categorically stating that my absorption is fine when I brought it up 🙄)
Not like I already told him all of this on Monday and he was too arrogant to listen...If anything, I think it might have been the addition of the T3 that saved me - if I hadn't been on it I'd probably be in a much worse place now, but the fact that it's the pure active hormone may possibly have kept me from being as symptomatic as I would otherwise have been with these abysmal levels.
Regardless, he still wants me off the T3 as a "control measure" and will check back with me in 2 months. This doesn't make any sense to me - if he wanted a control, surely he wouldn't want to change anything so he can compare my bloods from being recently off of antibiotics versus being completely off them to determine if they were the cause? But of course, we all know the real reason why he wants me off of the T3 and I'm sure his boss is very pleased...My plan is to begrudgingly do what he says so that no one can say I didn't try, but the second I get any kind of hypo symptoms, I'll demand the T3 back. I can't keep having endos treat me like a lab rat while I'm just trying to get on with my life.
A sidenote too - I wonder if maybe I have some kind of issue with thyroid-related medication in general? This is probably where I'll sound a bit stupid...but even when I had a thyroid, I struggled to go into remission on very high doses of carbimazole - I think I was taking up to 70mg daily at one point. Now, my body hardly reacts to very high doses of T4 and T3. Could there be a connection there?