[Harpy]

#1064183

Thila
Taking these relaxing actions will help with your emotional state, blood pressure and heart rate, as appointments always raise your nervous levels, but I don’t think they will have any effect on your actual T3 & T4 levels, so rest assured regardless of how nervous you are your levels will be what they are.
As your at the 7 week mark, this is around the point when most peoples levels normalise and I suspect you will be coming up to a dose reduction to come down to the maintenance dose, usually around 10mg MMi.
Hope all goes well,
I’d be interested in seeing what your levels of free T3, free T4 and TSH have been through your test history, I am doing some charts, comparing my partners test levels to others in their treatments and I think there is a consistant pattern.
Have you had your antibodies tested?, the main ones to test for are Thyroid Receptor Antibodies (TRab) aka TSH-Rab, TSI.
They are the ones that are stimulating the TSH receptors on your thyroid to produce excessive T3 & T4 even though you have very little TSH in your blood.

[Thila]

#1018348

Hello everyone,

I have an appt tomorrow to have another blood test run and I started wondering if your outlook/emotion/stress level at the time affected your results at all. I know that sounds crazy but I see the doc tomorrow after a full day of work and fighting traffic to get there.

I have really been watching what I eat (no seafood or anything with a high iodine content) and was wondering if you do anything to prepare yourself for a lab test? I am a teacher (sorry if I am being redundant from another post) and everything was peachy keen in the summer but school started again two weeks ago and I went from 0 mph at home to running 120 mph at work. It just makes me wonder if it affects your blood tests. I am hoping for good results. This will make week 7 that I have been on 40 mg of Methimazole. I still feel good but not nearly as calm as I did during summer break. I am willing to drink a gallon of water or do one of my yoga dvd’s right now if that helps!

[Kimberly]

#1064184

Hi Thila – I absolutely think that stress makes my Graves’ flare up…however, my personal belief is that it takes a few weeks of chronic stress for this to happen. I’m not aware of more immediate stressors (like traffic on the way to the lab) being able to spike our thyroid hormone levels in a short period of time.

One other thing that I have heard about blood draws is that it makes it easier if you are well-hydrated when your blood is drawn. However, *please* don’t drink a gallon of water at once, as that is seriously dangerous! I usually just focus on making sure I’m drinking enough water the day before…and then I add an extra glass before I head to the lab.

[Thila]

#1064185

Well, I made it through traffic in record time. I guess the godess of wrecks was not working against me today. Talked to the doctor about surgery in the future once my "hot" thyroid becomes cool. I was a little frustrated because the doctor wanted to increase the 40 mg a day to 60 mg a day for a month to make it cool down faster. He said that he may reduce it back again to the 40 mg or less depending on the results of my blood that was drawn today.

I thought he was going to want to do a scan but he doesn’t want to risk taking me off of Methimazole for two weeks. I told him that I was fine with it (been reading up on surgery for weeks on this site!) so I guess we shall see! He also told me that I could start walking again if I wished but no jogging or running. That made me happy.

I did some breathing exercises before he came in the room and this helped quite a bit. I tried to drink more water today at work so I would be hydrated. Guess I will have to wait and see.

Thanks ladies and have a fantastic day/night.

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