knees/legs

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

If I were you, I would do nothing until you see Dr P. He will be able to see were you are at and give you a treatment plan which may involve upping your thyroid meds plus other supplements.He will also have plenty of other advice re your pain. Your gp's etc are just going to treat symptoms, not causes. Have you got any recent blood work that you can take to him, and if not, can you get some done?

If you are hypo t, your gp (and endo) must address this, in some form or other. They should in the very, very least give you access to blood tests and be offering you treatment of some description . If you are not on the right thyroid meds then you are going to have aches and pains (I was virtually bed-ridden for two years originally and 'they' told me it was arthritis) Dr P will get you on the path to health and mobility.

julia

[Guest guest]

, thanks so much for replying. I was erring on the side of delaying any

further treatment for my knees until I'd seen Dr P but I'm tending to lose

confidence in my decision making ability!

All this is hard to explain without getting very long winded. I was originally

diagnosed hypot by Dr Skinner about 8 years ago, then had problems in getting to

see him and so transferred my care to another excellent doctor (who I know you

would be familiar with) a couple of years ago. In a nutshell, my financial

predicament has meant that, although I've been feeling far from great, I've not

been able to afford the full extent of the regular tests and dr's appts I've

obviously needed to optimise my meds dosage and haven't had the confidence to do

this without being monitored properly. Sadly, I recently discovered the lovely

doctor whose care I have been under for the last couple of years is now under

GMC scrutiny and I'm told will most likely not be prescribing Armour in the

future. There was a period of about 16 months when I was off Armour completely,

due to finances and, ironically, it not being available anyway. I recently

received my 'final' (because he'll no longer be prescribing it) prescription for

it and have been back on Armour - 1 grain per day plus 100mcg of Eltroxin - for

the last 3 weeks but, frankly, I'm feeling worse Being off Armour for 16+

months, I'd blamed all my ills on this so I'm really worried and disappointed

not to be feeling some benefit, having been back on it for 3/4 weeks.

My last bloods were done in Nov 09. I'm terribly disorganised/forgetful at the

moment - I know my TSH was 9.8 and I *think* T4 and free T3 were within 'normal'

but I'm going to have to dig out the test results to confirm that. Would hasten

to add that these bloods were taken after 7 days of being off ALL thyroid meds

on the instructions of my current (private) doctor. I definitely plan on being

tested for the 'whole works' before seeing Dr P so that I can show him the

results.

I really can't get into the fiasco here re my GP and NHS endo; it would fill

pages. Suffice to say, going back several years, she finally accepted I was

hypot on Dr Skinner's diagnosis. I asked her to prescribe me NDT, printed off

and showed her all the relevant info avaialable; she refused. I wrote to my

PCT, etc, etc, they also refused. She then discovered Dr Skinner's " problem "

with the GMC, called me into the surgery to warn me of this - like I didn't

already know or, indeed, was going to take on board any of what she was saying.

I have managed *never* to be confrontational with her, just persistent in trying

to ask for her constructive help. That's going back several years with

absolutely no luck so I just gave up on it. The endo I saw on the NHS before

being diagnosed by Dr Skinner ended up telling me i was simply depressed and

focusing too much on (imagined) ill health. I'm now at the point where my gp

surgery even refused to draw blood (I'd purchased the whole 'kit' through my

private doctor in Nov 09 - all the surgery needed to do was draw the blood).

She refused on the basis that I'd chosen to transfer my care to a private

doctor. I used the services of the local private hospital to draw the blood for

me.

Again, sorry for the ramble... I promise my posts will become much shorter and

to the point now that i've got some of the 'background' out of the way!

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