10 year old

[Guest guest]

Now I think I get the difference between free t-4 and the T-4

Index. FREE T-3 is not on the lab sheet as one of the boxes. If

it was, I would have marked it for the Doc. That is how I

originally got diagnosed. I " accidently " made a mark on the form

when my Doctor said he did not think I had enough symtoms to warrant

a check. (Despite the fact that my Mom and 4 siblings Hoshis).

Don't worry that doctor went bye-bye. My Husband and I actually

love our new Doctor. I think he genuinely did not realize that the

TSH scale had changed over the years.

My daughter's goiter is not nodular. It is soft and right now

painfull if you touch it or she is moving her neck just the right

way. The Endo said nothing about doing an ultrasound yet. When we

were in his office he was a little preturbed with my pediatrian for

only giving him one TSH test to go by and not having me call to get

a lab workup before I went into see him

I also heard him tell the nurse to find out who booked our

appointment and didn't tell me to come in for the lab form. I think

the poor guy felt unprepared to tell me anything. He said we were

going to start the Synthroid immediately (He made me promise to

have her take the first dose before we left the parking lot of the

blood lab), and that when we came back he would " check the goiter " .

I am feeling better about this Pediatric endo though. I have a long-

time friend who, before children was a Pediatrician. One of her

son's has a supposedly sub-clinical thyroid issue that this doc is

treating. She went through 3 other Pediatric Endos before she found

him. (I live in a large metropolitan area with many service

providers.) She says he is very good, thorough, and has been

willing to treat the labs as guidelines, not gospel.

I would like to have her calcatonin level checked. My sister has

Medullary Thyroid Cancer and had Papillary till they took out the

Thyroid and did the Radioactive Iodine. She had two nodules. They

biopsied the Papillary but did not biopsy the other which turned out

to be Medullary. So they were not as agressive when they did the

surgery as they would have been if they had known about the

Medullary. (Medullary spreads and does not pick up Iodine). So now,

a year later she has an inoperable medullary tumour in her neck.

Thankfully, her calcatonin levels have been steady for the past 5

months (they go up if the cancer grows). My doctor checked my

calcatonin level last year without hesitation, but the HMO ended up

making us pay. I want to say it was around $150. Best money I

spent and will spend from now on. Unbelievable that there is a

cancer that you can check for by a simple blood test and they don't

want to pay.

You folks have helped me realize that I need to be very pushy to

make sure that this is sorted out properly. Thanks for the

encouragement. Michele