The week before last I went in to meet with my doctor for my first follow up appointment after being diagnosed with Hashimoto's and PCOS. I was sort of nervous to see what I'd find out, since I had been following the medication and diet she had prescribed. I hadn't even had gluten since Thanksgiving. I was expecting to see some change, but also didn't really know since I honestly didn't feel better. We ran a lot less tests this time since we had it much more narrowed down, but here is what I found out.
THYROID:
-Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) went down from 4.49 to 1.99. That's definitely good, but my doc wants it under 1, so we're getting closer.
-T3 (another thyroid aspect) went from 3.1 to 4.2. That's not so good. It should be between 2.3-4.2 so I'm too high there. We'll work on that.
-T4 stayed the same so that's good.
So I went from a half tablet of my levoxyl (thyroid meds) to a whole tablet, hoping that will lower my TSH and T3. I'm still losing a lot of hair, so I'm hoping if this improves, that my hair will stop falling out so badly.
HORMONES:
-Dihydrotestosterone went from a 13 to a 16. That is still within the expected value, so we're not too stressed about that, even though it went up a bit.
-Regular testosterone went from a 60 (which was high) to an 83 which is really high :( This was the one thing I was really hoping would have gone down. I haven't had a period since November, and that is definitely why. I think deep down I really knew this hadn't changed.
So for this we are lowering my dosage of Vitamin D, getting rid of saw palmetto and hoping that will help.
My Doc said I am the only patient she's ever had with both Hashimoto's and PCOS so I'm a bit of an anomaly and things will take a bit more tweaking than she's used to. Most of her PCOS patients are teenagers and she's able to easily tweak their hormones, but because I'm older and because I have the slow thyroid on top of it, she thinks I'm just going to take longer to get right. I had some gluten last week and noticed that I didn't feel bad at all from it. My Mom was recently diagnosed with a gluten sensitivity, so I know that I am prone to the sensitivity as well, but I think as long as I keep it to a bare minimum that it won't kill me if I have it once every couple of months, but I am going to do my best to continue eliminating it. I want my thyroid to get better and I want my rash to keep at bay, which for the most part it is doing right now.
I can't believe its 2011. 2010, even though we had a lot of great things happen--me graduating and getting a job, taking some great trips and spending lots of good time with friends and family, over all-it wasn't a great year for us. We are still mourning over my health issues and the inability to get pregnant. Christmas was pretty sad for us, as nearly all our friends have kids now, and all seemed to have such happy holidays surrounded by happy kids. I still love spending time with my friends' kids, but all of the talk of babies and kids continues to make me sad and I find myself unable to know what to do with those feelings. I realize that I turn 32 this year, and Rick turns 34 and we aren't all that young when it comes to having a baby. It may take longer than I think to right these health issues, and even then, I still may not be able to have a baby. So I am devoting this year to coming to terms with the fact that I may never have my own baby and learning to be ok with that. Rick and I are taking a nice 10-day trip to the Yucatan in April. 4 days in Cancun and 6 in the Riviera Maya, about an hour or so south of Cancun. We'll be doing lots of relaxation and exploring of Maya ruins etc. We are both really looking forward to it, because all of this has been really hard on us, and in a lot of ways we haven't dealt with all of our feelings the way that we probably should. Neither of us are entirely convinced we want to adopt, not that we're not all for adopting, but neither of us quite feel like we've fully accepted our current situation and are ready to move to that next step. Hopefully we'll get there are some point.
Thanks again for your love and concern and I'll continue to keep you posted-my next appt with be in 8 or so weeks.
Happy New Year!
-Lauren & Rick
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