Re: 20 year old daughter/help with labwork please

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

While your daughters ferritin is on the lower end (suggested to be above 70 for

thyroid patients) I have seen much lower, mine was 7 at my last labs. Did they

test Iron too I dont see it here, regular iron levels should be checked too.

What about Vit C. If her vitamin C is low she will not obsorb Iron/Ferritin

well. She should be takig vit c with her medication to help obsorb it is she

doing this? It would be more helpful to her if she got an IUD she would have

small very light periods if any (which helps with low Iron and Ferritin) and it

would be an all year birth control, it also is better for a person who has

problems with the hormones because the hormones dont go into the blood stream

like they do with normal birth control, with an IUD the hormones are right into

the uterus.

Ask for her doctor to check her vit D levels as well. Low vit D is common with

thyroid patients and it should be monitored as well, if it is low it can give

some nasty symptoms that are similar to low thyroid levels.

When they tested her for antibodies did they test all thyroid antibodies or just

TPO? some people with have one and not the other, their are 3. Although they say

TPO can mean hashimoto or graves, thyroglobulin diagnoses hashimoto and TRAB

Thyroid stimulating hormone receptor diagnoses graves, I have known people with

the TRAB antibody but yet they have hypothyroid labs and symptoms. Make sure

they test for all of them you can have one and not the others or all of them,

everyone is different but yet many doctors only check for TPO.

About the synthroid I personally recommend getting her off the synthroid ASAP.

Doctors make it out to be great because that is what they are taught and what

the pharmaceutical sales people tell them. truth is its not not so great many

people never have success on it. I am one I used it for 2 years and had symptoms

and problems the entire time and was always told my symptoms were not from my

thyroid... NOT TRUE once I switched to natural meds and got off the synthroid I

started feeling great! Synthroid made me put on water weight I was always tired

yet had anxiety attacks (which my doctor told me it was impossible to have since

I was hypo also not true its a common side effect of synthroid). check some of

these out...

http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/synthroidproblems.htm

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/174931-Synthroid-Sucks-The-Rallying-Cry-of-Thy\

roid-Patients-vs-Clueless-Doctors

http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-6268-synthroid-not-fda-approved.html

Best wishes to your daughter!

>

> My 20 year old daughter was diagnosed as hypothyroid 8/2009. She was started

on Synthroid, .75 mcg and did not really feel better. She went off to college

shortly thereafter and it was difficult to make any progress while she was so

busy with college and away on the other side of the state. In January of 2010,

due to chronic abdominal pain, she had an ultrasound and was diagnosed with a

uterine polyp (benign) which was surgically removed in 1/2010, with the promise

of feeling better. She actually began to feel worse after surgery. Our nurse

practioner started her on Cytomel with the Synthroid dose of 75 mcg, but my

daughter quit the Cytomel after two days due to heart palps and generally

feeling terrible. The nurse practioner reduced her Synthroid to 50 mcg and said

stop the Cytomel at that time.

>

> In June 2010, due to the fact that she continued to have chronic abdominal

pain, more tests were run and another uterine polyp was discovered (the polyp

had grown larger than the first one in just 5 months), which was surgically

removed in July 2010 (also benign). The surgeon said he will not remove any more

polyps in someone this young and suggested going on stronger birth control 365

days out of the year to retard their growth. She has opted to go off the birth

control completely as being on them constantly was making her feel even worse.

We do not know what this means longterm as it relates to polyp re-growth.

>

> There have been numerous other tests run, including pyruvic acid to check for

mitochondrial disorder, and they have been normal. Since I have Hashimoto's, her

thyroid antibodies were checked but appear normal. So much labwork has been done

(we just finally got copies of it), but in an effort to keep this somewhat

brief, I will skip over to the most recent labwork:

>

> 8/12/10 labwork:

> TSH 1.42 (range 0.510-6.270)

> T3 Free 3.4 (range 2.3-4.2)

> T4 Free 1.42 (range 0.76-1.51)

> Calcium 9.6 (range 8.7-10.7)

> Phosphorus 4.1 (range 2.4-5.1)

> Magnesium 2.0 (range 1.3-2.7)

> Ferritin 21.0 (range 10.0-291.0) doctor's note " extremely low "

> ACTH, Plasma 9.7 (range 7.2-63.3)doctor agreed was lower end but not alarmed

about this number

> Results are pending on a TRH test

>

> For the past 10 months or so, she has had an elevated CA 125 which we felt was

due to the uterine polyps. The surgeon was totally unconcerned about her

numbers, however our nurse practioner has been somewhat concerned. Even though

it has declined, the last time it was checked it was still at 64.6 on a normal

range of 0.0-34.0 (on 1/4/10 she was at 160.6 on a range of 0.0-34.0). I don't

see that cortisol testing was done so I don't know cortisol levels. With the

lack of cortisol levels, but a low ACTH and continued elevated CA 125, do we

need to be concerned about the possibility of an adrenal tumor, or am I

uninformed on that possibility?

>

> Yesterday she began treatment for the low ferritin (folic acid, folate, iron)

and today she left for college. Once again we are faced with the long distance

health advocacy issue. In an effort to understand her health issues and support

her efforts toward better health, does anyone have any recommendations for me so

I am not reinventing the wheel? I should probably add that I once again asked if

my daughter should be on natural dessicated thyroid in addition to the synthetic

(such as I am optimized on), and the nurse practioner's response was that she

would like to just work on the low ferritin for now and not add in another

variable.

>

> Thanks for your help.

>

>

> Kirkland, WA

>