T3, T4 free and TSH

[Guest guest]

I am frustrated and need some help.

About 3 months ago I had TMJ surgery. During this surgery my doctor noticed my

thyroid was swollen and my eyes looked like someone who had thyroid problems. I

need to add that I have fibromyalgia as well as a few other conditions.

I decided to check out what may be causing a swollen thyroid. So as I always

do, I went to webmd and learned about thyroid disorders. I was told that you

could have an irregular thyroid level or an autoimmune thyroid problem such as

graves disease or hashimotos. When I was reading about hashimotos and got to

the symptoms I about fell over. I had all but one of the symptoms.

Armed with this information I decided to go to my GP and ask him.

He ran some blood work and my thyroid levels were:

T3= 77 normal levels for my lab are (76-181) only 1 point above normal

T4 Free= 1.0 (.8 to 1.8) only .2 above normal

TSH= .91 (.34 to 4.82)

According to him my levels were fine and he did not see a problem, but refered

me to an endocronologist.

I went to see the endocronologist. She told me based on her exam and my

symptoms alone she would have diagnosed me with hashimotos. However since my

thyroid levels were normal (very, very low normal) she wanted to wait 6 weeks

and run the levels again. If they were still low she would go ahead and put me

on a low dose of thyroid in an effort to help control some of my symptoms.

6 weeks later the lab tests were ran again.

T3= 104

T4 Free= .9

TSH= .47

So I called her to see what we were going to do, and she had a secretary call me

back and tell me everything was normal and we would do nothing. Needless to say

this has me upset because all the symptoms are still there. Yes my T3 slightly

increased, but my T4Free and TSH went down. They both are barely in the normal

catagory. The other thing that alarms me is that in January of 2009 or a year

ago my TSH was at 1.473. Now it is .47.

So my question is what should I do? Should I get a second opinion, or take

natural supplements? With my fibromyalgia I am more sensitive to everything. I

have found that normal for others is not normal for me. It is not like I want

another illness, but if I do have hashimotos and medicine could make me feel

better, than I want to find that out.

Please help me. If someone can put in plain language exactly what the

difference between T3, T4free and TSH is, I would also appreciate this.

Desperate in Kansas

Patti