update

[Guest guest]

I have a lot to update on.

Yesterday I went to my family doctor to discuss my blood work. It turns out that he had tried to send my thyroid medication scrip over to Erfa and somehow had sent it to the wrong fax # so he got the right one and sent it over yesterday. I went online and paid for it {$18 for 100 of 30 mg tablets}. It should be here in 7-10 days. He said we will start out with a low dose and check in within 3 weeks to see how I am doing, take more blood work and increase if I need to based on how I FEEL. He went on to explain that although my TSH and Free T3 and Free T4 levels are within the low-normal range that they should be higher and that we should take it all together... my labs, how I FEEL, and my temps, etc. My husband came with me to the appt. and told the doctor how different I have been lately. I have an appt. with the oncologist for Feb. 8th now for my low WBC and low RBC. The blood smear test came back and said this...

"RBCs: Possible Rouleaux formation vs. artifact {consider serum protein electrophoresis if clinically indicated}

WBCs: Reduced, mild lymphopenia. No circulating blasts."

I had low WBC and lymphocytes. He kept saying that we should check out Sheen {sp?} syndrome? Whatever that is?

Metabolic panel showed no kidney or liver problems. Everything normal there.

Vitamin D, 25 OH Total 36 20-100 ng/mL

Vitamin D, 25 OH, D2 <4 <20 ng/mL

Vitamin D, 25 OH, D3 36 ng/mL

He told me to take a liquid Vitamin D 2 and 3 supplement- 5000 iu. Said I was deficient as the range is actually supposed to be 80-100 for optimal Vitamin D.

He also said that my thyroid antibodies are not proof positive that I DON'T have Hashimoto's. Which I don't understand that much anyways. He said eventually my TSH will raise if not treated with thyroid hormone replacement.

Thyroglobulin Antibodies <20 <20 IU/mL

Thyroid peroxidase <10 <35 IU/mL

Today I went and saw another doctor that was on Shomon's website for Top Thyroid Docs. She is a board-certified family doctor, anti-aging doctor, and she uses biodentical hormones and uses a metabolic approach to healing. She can do all things a regular doc does but she kind of blends herbal/natural/healthy things with drugs and prefers to use the natural/bioidentical stuff first.

She sells a brand of products however and at first I was afraid that she was going to be pushing her products on me. She told us her story, explained a little bit about thyroid hormone stuff {not that I am a know it all or anything but none of it was anything I hadn't read before} and then when she did an exam all she did was feel my thyroid and listen to my heart, that was it. It was a little strange. I did have b/p, pulse, weight, temp taken in the beginning by the medical assistant. She ordered a slew of blood work... progesterone levels, DHEA-sulfate, estradiol, selenium, Lipoprotein A, anti-thyroid ab, anti-thyroid peroxidase Ab {this seems different than what the family doc tested}. She also ordered an ultrasound for my enlarged thyroid {which has never been done and I have had an enlarged thyroid for a LONG time!} She is also going to have me do a 24 hour saliva cortisol test and a saliva candida test. She recommended of course that I increase Vitamin D and that I take one of her products called AgelessXtra . http://us.univera.com/ I didn’t buy the product... it was seriously $54 for 1 30 oz. bottle of this elixir. I was leery of that and I honestly can not afford the price tag on that. My thyroid hormone is way cheaper than that from Erfa! I was concerned that it seemed like she had a lot of products to sell and her actual appointment examining me and talking to me took seriously 5 minutes.

We did have to sign a form saying that we would not discuss anything she teaches us at the group meeting about health as her way of taking care of her patients is much more different than her other colleagues who are still just treating their patients by the symptoms instead of trying to figure out the root causes of things and that we would not discuss with other people, due to privacy issues, who the other patients were there also. I am not sure how I feel about that and since I have to fast before the tests are done, I haven't gotten them done yet. I am still deciding if I want to. She doesn’t take my insurance though I have a few out of network benefits but everything else will come out of my pocket so I am still trying to figure out if I want to go with her protocol or not. Some advice/suggestions would be helpful if anyone has had experience with this kind of thing.

Anyways thanks for listening if you got this far.

in Wa