Excellent article by hypothyroid patient, saying how hard it can be.

[TaraJR]

An excellent article in Central Bylines, describing how hard it can be for a thyroid patient, and the battles we face. Please read and share wherever you can.

Title "Hypothyroidism: my relentless fight to stay well" by Mary Saunders

centralbylines.co.uk/news/h...

[arTistapple]

Yup great article.

[greygoose]

I'm not entirely happy with that article. She calls herself 'an expert in her own disease', but she clearly isn't. She says:

Most endocrinologists expect their treated hypothyroid patients to have a regular blood test with a result for thyroxine function within a specified reference range. Anecdotally, patients on liothyronine find that their result falls below this range and this function is deemed suppressed. This leads to patients having their medication adjusted downwards, regardless of symptoms.

Well, what is 'thyroxine function', for a start? And I think she's talking about the TSH, not the FT4. That's a bad mistake to make, and very confusing for others. And I can't see anywhere where you can make comments. Shame, really. Because in essence, it sums up the situation. But details are important to the whole.

[Divine1990 in reply to greygoose]

You can find Mary S on ' X' (if you are on X that is? ) She describes herself as a Thyroid warrior which she most certainly is.

[TaraJR in reply to Divine1990]

Yes she is.

[greygoose in reply to Divine1990]

Aren't we all! No, I'm not on 'X'. I don't even know what it is! lol

[TaraJR in reply to greygoose]

X is the new name given to Twitter by E Musk when he bought it.

[greygoose in reply to TaraJR]

Oh, right. How silly. No, I'm not on Twitter.

[RedApple Administrator in reply to greygoose]

'Well, what is 'thyroxine function', for a start?'

My guess is that's simply an 'auto correct' that got missed in editing. It's supposed to be thyroid function (i.e. TFT).

[greygoose in reply to RedApple]

Mmmeuuu... Why would auto correct change Thyroid function to thyroxine function. Besides, she should know that TSH is not a test for thyroid function because if you are taking T3, the thyroid isn't functioning anymore. Even if you're right, that paragraph is still a bit iffy.

[TaraJR in reply to greygoose]

I can guarantee she knows all her facts. I wonder if someone wording has been autocorrected, or mistyped.

[HealthStarDust]

This is so bizarre. I don’t understand why an endocrinologist would suggest t3 but prescribe it and the patient had to find it themselves?. Awful.

[helvella Administrator in reply to HealthStarDust]

In general hospital consultants cannot prescribe to out patients. They do not have drugs budgets which would fund ordinary pharmacy dispensing. (I think there are special rules when medicines are only available through hospital pharmacies.)

They can sometimes initiate a treatment - such as issue a first prescription. And suggest that a GP prescribes.

This was even more of a problem as T3 prices rose from around £20 to well over £250.

[HealthStarDust in reply to helvella]

How interesting. I was under the impression that those who have a NHS Endocrinologist could be prescribed it via them.

Now I am also curious about the special rules for dispensing only in hospital pharmacies.

That’s for the education.

[TaraJR in reply to helvella]

Some members of ITT group always have to get their T3 from a hospital. If the local ICB policy states that. An utter waste of time and money of course, as costs in secondary care are far more than in primary care.

[TaraJR in reply to HealthStarDust]

On ITT group we've heard of this quite a lot. Drs too scared of their CCG/ ICB to do the right thing.

[Star13]

Some Hospital Endocrinologists can prescribe and of course those prescriptions must be filled in Hospital pharmacies.

Other hospital consultants are not given budgets to do so. They tend to expect GP’s to prescribe what they advise. With T3 many won’t take a referral unless they know that there is already funding in place for it so that they are not wasting their time advising a GP.

I write the above from personal experience.

[Teddyandolive in reply to Star13]

Which creates a mess. The week after my gp referral to endocrinology was rejected with the assertion (among others) that there is a blanket ban on the prescribing of T3 in the county, a (male) friend in the same county was prescribed T3 by an nhs endocrinologist.

[TaraJR]

The author Mary has requested the text in that sentence is corrected to what was submitted. There had been an error in publishing and Central Bylines is correcting it.

[TaraJR]

The publisher has now corrected the error in the sentence several people commented on. Thanks for the alert to it.