Dee - Re: my mom's thyroid

[Guest guest]

lolabeetle2 wrote:

> Hi all.

>

> I'm about my mom's thyroid. In the early 70's she had most of it

> removed because of a multinodular goiter. I believe she said she was

> 33 at the time. They left a sliver in and she has never had to take

> synthetic thyroid hormones to supplement her own TSH. She seems to

> think it could have grown back. Can that happen?

What's with mothers who think thyroids can grow back??

A while back, we had a member whose mother (an RN, no less!) wanted her to

disregard her cancer diagnosis, stop her medication and let her thyroid

grow back. Mom went on to say that no one ever dies of thyroid cancer

(proof positive that mom didn't have her facts straight).

Depending on how large a sliver your mom had/has, it may well be (and

obviously is) providing enough hormone to keep her fine, but in the words

of an ENT surgeon friend, it's almost inconceivable to have a total

thyroidectomy and have even an entire thyroid lobe grow back, much less an

entire gland.

OTOH, my father swears he had is tonsils removed twice, because they grew

back the first time, so maybe that generation had particularly regenerative

body parts.

> She's never been monitored by an endoc, but says that her doc checks

> her TSH level when she goes for physicals which it not very often I

> know for a fact. Even if her TSH level is within normal range,

> shouldn't she check in with an endoc or is that only necessary if

> you've had thyca?

It's not a bad idea to check in with an endo, but if she's not having any

problems, and didn't have cancer, I'd say it's probably not necessary. We

have had members who had TT's, been declared benign, then years later have

thyca mets, proving that the original pathology was incorrect. But there's

no reason to think that's the case with your mom.

> I guess what I'm getting at is that my TSH was normal and I had

> thyca. Shouldn't she check in with an endoc since it's been almost

> 30 years?

Most of us had fully and normally functioning thyroids when our cancers

were discovered.

That your TSH was normal when your cancer was found, doesn't suggest that

your mom's normal TSH is a symptom of thyca :-)

-

(not a doctor)

NYC (still in LA, though no longer at the conference)