Update on Graves Disease

[cali4niachef]

On the 20th of January I sought a 2nd opinion from another Endo. She too recommended RAI, I refused and said I wanted to try a low-dose of PTU for a variety of reasons. One of them is I'm still nursing my almost 1yr old.

I had a follow-up yesterday. My T3 total before treatment was over 800, it should be between 97-219. It was down to 260!!!! All of my levels were down. Anti-thyroid drugs have a rare but serious side effect of lowering your WBC, which puts you at risk for a slew of health problems and affecting your liver. My WBC and liver were fine!

I will go back in June and do some more blood-work. Meanwhile I will remain on 300mg of PTU and 100mg of Atenolol daily. Come June I may slowly wean off of the PTU and see if I can achieve remission! I'm so hopeful and so glad I didn't just go with what the endos recommended.

Radioschmadio activesmchactive iodine, ha!

[Danotoyou2]

Mar. 11, 2009 at 4:13 PM

OMG, that's fantastic! I'm so happy for you I just got all teared up!

[TanyaR1024]

Mar. 11, 2009 at 8:46 PM

Yah!!! Thats so awesome!! I'm so glad you may be able to avoid the RAI! Thats great!

[cali4niachef]

Mar. 12, 2009 at 1:05 AM

Tanya I'm not sure if I'll be able to dodge RAI ever. If I do achieve remission, i'm not sure if remission will be permanent or just last for a couple months/years. My thyroid could very well go back to being hyper again, then I may have to try something else and go through the whole process again. I *might* have to do RAI one day but for now I'm just going to take it one-step at a time and remain optimistic.

(Original Poster)

[Sebastian]

Mar. 12, 2009 at 10:43 PM

Yeah!  I'm so happy for you.  And, even if you do someday need to do RAI, perhaps it will be at a time where you aren't nursing.  Prayers for continued health and good news.