20 year old daughter/help with labwork please

[Guest guest]

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