You have many jingles from my corner.
I ditto the suggestions of get a different doctor if you can.
I have unfortunately been in a similar situation and it was horrible. Feeling like your body isn’t in your control is miserable, so are the judgements of others, so is dealing with pain etc. I wish I could offer more help…but you have lots of jingles and prayers/positive thoughts (whatever you like best) from me fwiw.
Oh let me tell you about MY thyroid and Dr.s. My bloodwork shows a normal level of thyroid. Nuff said. NO, Dr #2 will not give me synthroid. No need. Normal blood levels.
Dr#3 in my hometown says all symptoms appear to be low thyroid. Orders isotope uptake screening. Wow, slow, slow thyroid. Orders synthroid.
Dr#4 says that is stupid, blood work shows normal levels in my blood. Will not renew synthroid. I go into depression and slow down and gain weight.
I refuse to see the former Dr.s and get a new one. I tell him of the Isotope uptake test and the results. He agrees with the Dr. who gave me synthroid.
Gives me 6 months supply. Explains to me that the body can make anitbodies against it’s own thyroid. I will be on synthroid the rest of my life.
New clinic Dr. askes me why I am on synthroid. I tell him because my body has made anitbodies against my own thyroid hormones and I NEED the Synthroid. I will not stop taking it. Dr. Apologises and is careful how he askes questions from then on.
I have to be on a very low carb diet to keep the weight off. I am an O+ blood type and can not eat like civilians. I love bread but I am wheat allergic.
I eat it and gain lots of weight and get intestinal pain. Anything good I can’t have.
Check out your blood type and read up on the blood type diets.
I found how I can live and not look like a baby blimp. It is not easy. Most other people have no clue that most foods have gluten in them.
Eating out is hard. I eat lots of salads. Hold the crutons though.
I have learned how to make my own goodies with Splenda and no flour.
Research on what each of these diets is based on and find one that is healthy and works.
I learned the hard way you can’t cheat on these diets either. It will set you back to square 1.
OK just wanted to add my 2 cents worth.
Sadlmakr
Yup, been there, done that, wrote the book, sent the postcard. Sadlmakr, with your levels of thyroid and anti-thyroid antibodies, you may have Hashimoto’s disease. Ask the good doc about that. Maybe get a thyroid ultrasound. Do you have a goiter?
But I bet they haven’t tried to send you for a psych consult yet.
Ditto on the Hashimoto’s. You can get the antibodies blood test.
What was the article regarding Thyroid and tendon tears?
But I bet they haven’t tried to send you for a psych consult yet.
:lol: Actually, I had a choice about which way to go when we started diagnosing the fibro… and I chose Psychiatrist because I was worried it might be depression.
I’ve gone once every 3-4 mos, and so far they are the ones who actually diagnosed the Fibro. They agree a few of the symptoms might have been mild depression… but that’s common with chronic pain.
They keep me supplied with the Cymbalta… 
I have to pick up a ‘questionairre’ for a new MD. Which is kinda funny–but is a good first step. At least they’ll know how much of a hypochondriac whiner I am… :rolleyes:
Two things:
If you keep seeing the same doc can you take someone with you to talk about the meds? Sometimes it helps to have reinforcements.
The only anti-depressant I can take and not gain weight is nefazadone which is the generic form of Serzone which was banned in the US. The nefazadone was not banned. I took Zoloft for three months about 10 years ago and gained 30 pounds. I know lots of people have trouble with weight gain with Seroquel. It’s one of the reasons many kids are getting fat. It makes them crave carbs. Wellbutrin won’t promote weight gain but when I took it I couldn’t sleep AT ALL.
Don’t know how old you are but there was a good article in the NYT Sunday magazine a few weeks ago about depression, middle aged women, and hormones. The gist was that that decline in hormones starting in perimenopause can be debilitating to your mental health. The writer concluded based on research concerning the effects that she would rather do the HRT for four or five years than live in a black hole of depression. I think about it myself sometimes.
myhorsefly I have the article at home. I’ll look it up for you.
Thanks, Tiki.
get a belgian
If any needs a pdf of a research article, let me know and I can probably download for you.
myhorsefly, here’s a link to the article on ruptured tendons and a possible relationship to hypothyroidism
Hoof… I’m "expanding’ into Aztecas and Spanish Normans.
They too have hind ends which will make MINE looks smaller.
[QUOTE=Tiki;4854183]
PP, for one thing, the TSH is only ONE of the parametes to look at. What were your other values, T4, free T4, T3 or Total T3. Were any of those run too? TSH alone proves nothing.
If your TSH is high borderline and your T4 is low borderline, have them run anti thyroid and anti nuclear antibodies for you.
I’m asking because I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and I’ve had 2 physicians try to send me for a psych consult because I was sooooo tired all the time, falling asleep all the time and complaining that I had all the symptoms of hypothyroidism. Well, I did, I had Hashimoto’s. That is an autoimmune disease that produces anti thyroid antibodies, so it kills off the thyroid hormone as fast as the body can produce it, ergo, hypothyroid symptoms with normal lab results. I also had a thyroid ultrasound which showed a clear pattern of Hashimoto’s.
What did that do to me? Well, hypothyroidism (diagnosed or not) weakens the collagen matrix and thins and weakens the tendons. In fact, by treating me for what they assumed was a trochanteric bursitis, i.e. giving me cortisone shots, is what tipped the cart - so to speak. So… I wound up tearing the gluteus minimum tendon right off the hip and tore the gluteus medius muscle. No one would believe me. They kept treating me for a trochanteric bursitis. I got worse and worse and finally got to a sports medicine doc, got a good MRI and they found a joint replacement specialist who said he could repair it. (At first they told me no one could). I am now almost 5 months post surgery, still very weak on my left side for walking or climing stairs, but for the first time in about 10 years I can stand up straight. I always slouched and just thought it was due to bad posture as a kid. I’m slowly walking better, have less of a limp without my crutch and very slowly gaining strenght. The surgeon says it will be a year to get the tendon to fully heal back to the bone and get all my strength back, but I finally have hope.
In the meantime, I finally found one endocrinologist who didn’t try to send me to a shrink and has been treating me for about 5 years.
It’s a very easy diagnosis, but most docs would rather send you to a shrink than consider Hashimoto’s. Don’t know that’s what you have, but anti thyroid and anti nuclear antibodies and a thyroid ultrasound are the ONLY way to rule it out and most docs don’t want to do it.
Good luck![/QUOTE]
Holy cow, I have the exact same story (except I just got the other thyroid tests the other day so don’t know the results). I was just wondering if my rheumatoid problems or something else was in fact weakening my tendons leading me to easily tear or inflame them. I have now had 3 rotator cuff repairs (total detachments), back surgery for disk hernia, 6 years of tennis elbow and more sprains than I can even count. It’s so frustrating. I can barely walk outside without getting in a major accident. they are from falls and such but falls that normal people would not shake a stick at. Heck “I” would not have shaken a stick at 20 years ago.
OP, I have had the exact same problem. Now I have type 2 diabetes too. I have finally decided to try and wean off the cymbalta and see if it makes a difference. I wish I had an answer except that is just sucks.
Medications and weight gain sometimes go together and can’t be helped.
I had a heart attack from a heart defect, not heart disease, no clogged arteries.
That left me with some scar tissue in the heart and an arrythmia.
For that, they put me on a minuscule amount of a beta blocker, that regulates the heart just right.
BUT, I gained 35 lbs in the first 5 months on that medication, threatened to quit it, but the cardiologist threatened to fire me if I did.:eek:
Thankfully the weight gain stopped there and in the subsequent five years whittled some 15 lbs off.
I just can’t get any more off, yet.:rolleyes:
The Drs say not to worry about my weight, better some extra weight than a heart that beats all over the place and may quit from it.:no:
The worst is that the extra weight makes riding harder, from getting on to the old motor memory and timing, that are just a little bit off from the extra “fluff”.
No more riding little colts either, too heavy and not limber enough now for them.
Extra weight is really not good, but some times, it sure is hard to keep off.
Yeah, I’ve been following the line that my doctors told me too, “better to stay stable than try and lose, since you don’t have any other symptoms.” I have been through a lot in the last 10 years trying to lose that extra 30 lbs I put on after a serious riding accident kept me on crutches for a year. Been on 2 professional weight loss $$$ programs for 4 months each, been on a doctor supervised 800 cal diet for 6 months, tried metformin, had a personal trainer. And never lost more than 3 or 4 pounds total.
Except despite ever diminishing dietary intake and massive efforts to keep fit, my fitness level and endurance have been dropping over the past 2 years and in the last 8 months I put on 10 lbs or so. While eating less than 1200 cals per day and exercising 2-3 hours per day. And then my annual physical showed high blood sugars…and my blood pressure was up…and I was in constant muscle pain…and I have torn/stretched/strained both knees, one three times, my wrist, my hips, my arches have fallen and my back keeps going out- all in the last 8 months.
Thanks to this thread, I asked my ortho guy about thyroid, despite normal bloodwork ( yeah, high normal TSH and they won’t do the other bloodwork here unless your TSH is abnormal)
Well, what I discovered is that my TSH used to run around 0.99. And now its 3.4 . I lost 2/3 of my hair, and had every other symptoms of low thyroid you can get. The ortho said “try a little synthroid”. I have tried a little for the past two weeks. I lost 2 lbs in 2 weeks. I am no longer in constant pain. I no longer have morning stiffness that lasts for hours. I have energy to do my exercise without resting an hour for every 1/2 hour I exercise. My blood pressure is back to normal. I have to get the bloodwork redone for my sugars, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve come down to normal too, since the horrible morning breath I had the last few months ( which comes along with high blod sugar feeding the bacteria) is gone. So even though my TSH is technically normal, its not normal for me.
Yeah, and the depression- that was gone within 24 hours of starting the thyroid med. And yet, my own GP was waaaay ready to put me on some powerful antidepressant drug, rather than give me the synthroid, which I had been asking to try already.
:mad::mad::mad::mad: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :mad::mad::mad::mad:
I just don’t understand why it is so hard to get diagnosed and treated. One of my primary care docs (well, NP) told me they’d laugh her out of the hospital if she sent me for an endo referral with ‘normal’ thyroid levels. One endo doc told me I was probably hypothyroid, but sill within normal limits. He and one other doc told me, “Come back when your thyroid fails.”
I had a goiter, I had aaaalllllllllllllllllll the symptoms (still do have symptoms) and I had 2 docs try to give me a psych referral. IT’S HASIMOTO’S, an autoimmune disorder. Along with hypothyroidism, it causes hypercholesterolemia, hypertension and weak, think tendons. My new endo has put me on a couple of thyroid meds, but also meds to lower cholesterol and BP, and I STILL have symptoms. HELLO!! :mad::mad: Grrrrrr :mad::mad:
well, I will say this is giving me some hope at least.
CatonLap, your experience is escpecially encouraging.
Tiki, I can’t believe after your INJURY they aren’t treating you.
:(Well, they are. and he says the labs are right on and maybe a little too much replacement, but I STILL have all the symptoms. HA!! He says they could be from many other things. Well, I want to know, what are those other things?
This is like trying to pull adult molars using a string tied to a doorknob.:lol:
OK, here’s some more info to muddy the waters: I was dxed with Hypo in 2007, they put me on Synthroid and I CRASHED. Low BP, couldn’t climb up stairs, hair falling out, cold and achy all the time. Doctors tried to pawn me off on Mayo, and of course, write me off as “depressed.” If I had taken the anti-depressants they had prescribed, I’d have been dead. Turns out I have Addison’s disease (my adrenals don’t work), as well as Hashimotos. Had to diagnose myself, and found an endo to confirm it. Problem was, after we got that under control, it took two more years to realize I was very hypothyroid, but the doctor wouldn’t accept it. Lost alot of hair, weight gain (they blamed my Addison’s meds), etc. etc. Had to fire THAT endo and find a progressive GP who took my word that I felt hypothyroid despite labs in the normal range. Turns out I don’t convert T4 to T3 properly, so when I take Synthroid, I actually get MORE hypo. I’m now on a regimine of compounded time-relase T3, and feeling better every day. I’m on 90 mcg/day (started at 15/day), and will probably go higher before I level out. No T4 (Synthroid) at all. My labs show my T4 and T3 way out of range low, but my TSH is in the high range of normal. So much for relying on labs! And I’m feeling better than I have for the last 2 years. At any rate, endocrinology is the most under-studied, ignored field in the medical field today, IMO, and I think that’s because it’s mostly us women that are affected and we don’t gripe loud enough. Take control, do your research. YOU CAN FEEL BETTER! There’s a website called stopthethyroidmadness that is very educational. Best wishes in your struggles, and keep up the fight to feel better!
For what it is worth, I am a nurse practitioner in a university based rheumatology practice and cannot recall seeing significant weight gain with cymbalta specificially. The SSRI’s, l(zoloft, paxil, prozac), perhaps. Not so much the SNRI’s like cymbalta, effexor, savella.
But one thing I’ve learned after 15 years, the patient knows her body best. Follow your gut. It’s hard. For the majority of health care providers, fibromyalgia is the real F word. Yet this is a condition that is incredibly common, cross cultural and has been reported since the beginning of written history. I have a women’s health book from the 1800’s that reports such symptoms under the diagnosis of Hysteria.
Whatever is not well understood is marginalized. In our defense, the clinicians are not solely to blame for this perspective. My boss is not a clinical professional, she has an MBA. My job security is based on production, hard numbers. Given the multisystem nature of its symptomology, FM is never a quick appt.
From the patient perspective, it is a condition that responds poorly to pharmacologic therapy alone. Unlike many, however, you are very active physically. Few understand the incredible, therapeutic value of physical activity (and SLEEP). My instinct tells me that cymbalta helps keep you that way.
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