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I think it was a couple of years back now that my thyroid first started going south. My TSH came back at 0.001something (normal is around 1, which I always had in the past when it was tested, and the lower this is the higher the T3 and T4 which were correspondingly high but I don't recall the numbers).
Anyway I was stable on 20mg carbimazole for ages, the symptoms had all gone away and my arteries which got completely shredded improved markedly, I went from hobbling to walking five miles or so, not entirely without pain but what do you expect since I now know I was blasting the poor things with alternating baths of glucose after eating followed by insulin in huge quantities for most of my life.
Don't even think of mentioning "cholesterol" or even LDL, the thyroid drove my LDL down by EXACTLY as much as the statin I no longer bother to take, yet that was when my arteries got blocked, and when my LDL went back up again as my thyroid came under control, that was when they improved.
Then I suddenly started feeling bad for no apparent reason. The light went on when I noticed the outer third of my eyebrows had vanished and my hair was coming out in armfuls. I stopped the carbimazole and had another thyroid test which showed my TSH had gone up to 12, at which point I felt like a corpse.
After a while I started feeling differently worse, and my TSH had gone back down to 0.001 and my T3 and T4 were through the roof again, neither I nor my doctor expected the changeover to be so rapid. At the same time my arteries clagged up and I was reduced to hobbling again.
I restarted the carbimazole and initially the symptoms got worse. One day I was only standing up in the shower but my heart was pounding like I'd just run a marathon and I was getting bouts of shaking and trembling. I had to sit down in the bath until I'd recovered.
For about a week I took an extra carbimazole in the evening as the pounding heart and tremors were coming back about twelve hours after the morning dose. When this stopped happening I went back to the original 20mg which had worked so well for so long. I tinkered with taking it afternoon, evening or at night until the doctor helpfully pointed out the tabs were scored so I could split the dose morning and evening, which worked well except every so often one pill would explode into a pile of tiny rubble which I'd have to divide into two piles and lick up.
This time the recovery in terms of symptoms was far more rapid, I soon got back to walking 2 - 3 miles.
Collected the form for another test but by then I'd noticed some of the hypOthyroid symptoms were beginning to return so I waited a bit until they seemed to have stabilised. Good grief! My TSH was 38! At which point I was a bit surprised I was still alive, yet I didn't feel nearly as bad as previously at 12. Um, I wonder if it was a lab error or if the receptionist missed out a decimal point, 3.8 seems subjectively more likely.
I cut the dose back to half a pill per day and have another test coming up at year's end, currently I'm feeling much improved but my eyes still feel a bit bulgy, a symptom of high thyroid (remember Marty Feldman?) Maybe three quarters of a pill will turn out to be the sweet spot? (to be continued)
Anyway I was stable on 20mg carbimazole for ages, the symptoms had all gone away and my arteries which got completely shredded improved markedly, I went from hobbling to walking five miles or so, not entirely without pain but what do you expect since I now know I was blasting the poor things with alternating baths of glucose after eating followed by insulin in huge quantities for most of my life.
Don't even think of mentioning "cholesterol" or even LDL, the thyroid drove my LDL down by EXACTLY as much as the statin I no longer bother to take, yet that was when my arteries got blocked, and when my LDL went back up again as my thyroid came under control, that was when they improved.
Then I suddenly started feeling bad for no apparent reason. The light went on when I noticed the outer third of my eyebrows had vanished and my hair was coming out in armfuls. I stopped the carbimazole and had another thyroid test which showed my TSH had gone up to 12, at which point I felt like a corpse.
After a while I started feeling differently worse, and my TSH had gone back down to 0.001 and my T3 and T4 were through the roof again, neither I nor my doctor expected the changeover to be so rapid. At the same time my arteries clagged up and I was reduced to hobbling again.
I restarted the carbimazole and initially the symptoms got worse. One day I was only standing up in the shower but my heart was pounding like I'd just run a marathon and I was getting bouts of shaking and trembling. I had to sit down in the bath until I'd recovered.
For about a week I took an extra carbimazole in the evening as the pounding heart and tremors were coming back about twelve hours after the morning dose. When this stopped happening I went back to the original 20mg which had worked so well for so long. I tinkered with taking it afternoon, evening or at night until the doctor helpfully pointed out the tabs were scored so I could split the dose morning and evening, which worked well except every so often one pill would explode into a pile of tiny rubble which I'd have to divide into two piles and lick up.
This time the recovery in terms of symptoms was far more rapid, I soon got back to walking 2 - 3 miles.
Collected the form for another test but by then I'd noticed some of the hypOthyroid symptoms were beginning to return so I waited a bit until they seemed to have stabilised. Good grief! My TSH was 38! At which point I was a bit surprised I was still alive, yet I didn't feel nearly as bad as previously at 12. Um, I wonder if it was a lab error or if the receptionist missed out a decimal point, 3.8 seems subjectively more likely.
I cut the dose back to half a pill per day and have another test coming up at year's end, currently I'm feeling much improved but my eyes still feel a bit bulgy, a symptom of high thyroid (remember Marty Feldman?) Maybe three quarters of a pill will turn out to be the sweet spot? (to be continued)
