About DeborahSu
- Postion: Site owner, forum Admin, and Moderator of the General Thyroid forum
Hi! I'm Deborah. Just so you have a better idea of who's on the other end of this computer connection, I'll share a bit about myself.
My temps have been low for as long as I've been able to read a thermometer (back when they were always glass mercury things), so probably 13 or 14. In my teens, I drank way too much and started smoking—which, for some people, appears to be self-medicating for hypo.
In my 20's, I was infertile. I probably had one early miscarriage, but that's it. In my late 20's, I was in the Army followowing my first divorce. Stationed in Panama, every time I had to run uphill at all, I threw up. I lost my appetite and lost weight. I don't believe that anyone ever checked my cortisol, but they did make me swallow stuff to check out my stomach and intestines! They wound up prescribing doxepin, an antidepressant that they said would also heal a small ulcer, in case I had one they didn't detect. Now, I'm sure that was my adrenals crying out for help. Stress has caused nausea for me since my early teens.
I'd always wanted children SO badly that, by the time I hit 30, I cried every time my period started. It was almost a relief when I never had another after my 34th birthday! I now know that premature ovarian failure can be related to adrenal autoimmune antibodies—but nobody ever checked them, and my thyroid tests always came out “in range.”
At age 40, my mom died after driving head-on into a semi (18-wheeler) in October, my then-husband attempted suicide AGAIN in November, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in December, and I had to submit my credo (seminary's equivalent of thesis) in January. Needless to say, I didn't get my M.Div. that May right after my dad died. I did finally divorce my husband that summer, though, after yet another suicide threat. I sometimes felt that he intended to take me with him (and he did threaten to more than once), and finally just couldn't live like that anymore.
A man who had been a long-distance friend through an online support group became more than a friend rather quickly that Fall, and we married the following January. Since he had 3 children from a previous marriage and they'd had little stability in their lives, I gave up pastoring and moved to their state.
I'd begun to gain a bit of weight after the divorce—I figured that I finally felt safe enough that the adrenaline didn't need to flow at quite so high a rate, and I was delighted! But a year or two later, I felt like life was just more than I could handle. I was anxious and depressed, and was put on antidepressants. The doc gave me a scrip for thyroid testing, but since it had been checked so often with always “normal” results, I didn't take it seriously and didn't follow through. I did, however, gain about 40 pounds more in a month or two. I'd always weighed between 90 and 95 pounds, so suddenly hitting 155 on my small-boned 5'2” frame was horrible!
A couple of years after that, I went to a health screening offered by my employer and paid a little extra to check out my thyroid. It surprised me to see that everything was out of range! So, I took my results to a doctor, who agreed that I was hypo, and prescribed Synthroid (hereafter to be called $yncrap).
Three weeks into it, I had hives all over my body, no energy, no stamina, and I felt like I was dieing. She increased my dose, and I felt a little bit better ... but again, three weeks later, I felt the same way all over again, including the hives! I did a bit more research and discovered the NaturalThyroidHormones group on Yahoo! I asked the doc for Armour at my next visit, but she insisted that I try compounded time-released T3/T4 first, because she'd seen some good results with it. The stuff didn't do anything more for me than the $yncrap had, so I got my Armour prescription—for ½ grain.
Now, I'd been on 40mcg T4 and 10mcg T3, so that Armour was equivalent to about half of what I'd been taking. Within 24 hours, I had a killer headache that only went away when I doubled the Armour to 1 grain. I called the doc to ask for an increase, but I never did get her on the phone. The best I got was to talk to a nurse, who told me that the doc told her to tell me that I could just refill my prescription early. I didn't return to that office, and I did order my own Armour.
At the end of the summer, I tried another doc, but this time brought my husband and youngest daughter along, since they seemed to also have hypo symptoms. What a disaster!
He insisted that what I needed was time-released T3. He prescribed hundreds of dollars worth of supplements, plus 100mg pregnenolone and 25mg DHEA, after drawing around 30 vials of blood from each of us for testing. At our next visit, 6 weeks later, I told him that I was feeling worse. The test results showed that my cortisol and ACTH were very low in range, but he didn't bat an eye and assured me that I just needed more TRT3—and I didn't know any better at the time. I didn't even know what ACTH was! Now, I know that I have secondary adrenal insufficiency and will need to take hydrocortisone or something like it for the rest of my life.
For two years, I tried to get optimized on Armour and couldn't. More than once, I passed my “sweet spot” and had to start over. The first time was because my cortisol was too low. After that, it turns out to have been because my B-12 was too low at 611. Now that I've got my adrenals well supported and got my B-12 levels up, I seem to be optimized at 3-3/4 grains Armour—after getting as high as 6 grains at one point, and still not feeling good! Lesson learned!
Anyway ... I didn't expect to take up so much space with this!!! When Janie decided to start the STTM site, with forums, I began moderating the General Thyroid forum there. When she found that she couldn't maintain the Yahoo group, STTM, and a real life, she asked me to consider opening the forums on a new site—and here we are! Welcome!