[steph119]

#1018281

Hi,
It’s 3 in the morning and I was again awake in the middle of the night. After searching a little bit I, thankfully, found this forum. After a few quick searches it feels good to see I’m not alone.

I was diagnosed by my primary care physician with hyperthyroidism at the end of May 2010. I presented to her office with a resting rapid heart beat (140+ bpm), high BP, difficulty sleeping, and increase in bowel movements. I’m a 40 year old female so I had been thinking I was at premenopause. After receiving my labs a few days later, my MD called to tell me to immediately start taking PTU 100mg 3x/day and propranolol 60mg 1x/day. My MD office would be setting up an appt for me with an endocrinologist. For whatever reason, it took the endocronologist until August to get me scheduled in. After seeing my endocrinologist in August she immediately stopped the PTU. She said it wasn’t safe. She started me on Methimazole 30mg once daily and increased my propranolol to 120mg/day (I still had a resting heart beat above 120). My diagnosis was Graves disease. She scheduled my RAI for Sept 30.

On Sept 30, I went to outpatient for RAI. I took my four days off work as required. I went back to work on Sept 4. Since that time, I feel even worse than before. I’m edgy to say the least. I blew up on a coworker last Thursday. This just isn’t like me. It was a pretty ugly confrontation. I have a lot of gas (which did start before I started taking the meds). Is all this normal?

Any reply is appreciated.

Thanks,
Stephanie

[Bobbi]

#1063724

Thyroid cells not only make thyroid hormone, they store it for future use. When thyroid cells are destroyed after RAI, they release that stored supply of hormone into the body all at once. About one week after RAI — give or take — this "dumping" of thyroid hormone into the body causes us to be even more hyperthyroid than before the treatment. This episode is limited in duration because the thyroid cells are not manufacturing NEW hormone to dump, just the stored supplies.

Sometimes our doctors warn us of this, and give us a medication to help alleviate the symptoms during this time. Not everyone can take the meds however. But if you need to, call your doctor to see if he/she will prescribe something tide you over through these next few days. It might help to know that the T3 that is being dumped only has a half-life of 18 hours or so. What that means is that at the end of the first day, half of it is already essentially "gone" from your body. T3 is the most potent form of thyroid hormone. So its impact is over much quicker than the effect of the T4 being dumped. What that means for you is that the worst of the symptoms should be gone in a few days.

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