[Anonymous]

#1020049

About the time that I was diagnosed with Graves (early 2006), I started to have a bunch of basil cell skin cancer places crop up all over my body. Does anybody know of a link between the two? Like most folks, I probably had more sun exposure than I should have as a kid; but I don’t recall ever really burning badly. It seems like too much of a coincidence for them to be totally unrelated. My dermatologist thinks there is a connection; but my endo does not. If you know of a connection, is there anything that I can do to minimize it? I did a chemo-therapy skin treatment before Christmas on my face, back and chest to try to get ahead of the problems; only to find out last month that I now have one behind my ear where the “sun never shins” since I have always had long hair. I go into Omaha next week to have it surgically removed by a specialist. After my experience 2 months ago with RAI, I am a bit hesistant to have surgery as my health is still not tremendously stable. The dermatologist seems to think it will be fine and that I should go ahead and have it removed.

Does anyone know of a connection? If so, is there anything that I can do to minimize the skin cancer? My endo checked my vitamin D to make sure I wasn’t deficient and that came back fine. I am doing my best to minimize exposure to the sun.

Thanks,
Anne

[Anonymous]

#1075831

I havew graves disease and my eyes bulge. I am wondering what can I do to get my eyes back to the way they were. I am going to have the radio-iodine as my treatment then I want to correct my eyes because they are too big and it has really damaged my self-esteem.

[Anonymous]

#1075832

The eye disease does seem to make a bad situation infinitely worse. What can be done to fix the way we look depends upon a number of factors. First of all, know that once the “hot” phase of the eye disease is over, that the symptoms get better. Protrusion can abate somewhat, double vision might go away, or become less frequent. But in cases of very bad eye disease, surgeries might be the only way to get your appearance back to normal. There are procedures called “decompression” which remove bone to make more room for the eyes in the eye sockets. There are surgeries for strabismus (double vision), as well as other, less common surgeries.

The best solution is to find a good opthamologist who specializes in surgical ameliorations — sometimes this type of doctor is called an “oculo-plastic” surgeon. But your opthamologist should be able to recommend someone to you.

Wishing you good luck,
Bobbi — NGDF Online Facilitator

[Anonymous]

#1075833

Missuse, you might consider getting a second opinion about having radioactive iodine if you have the eye disease. There is evidence that RAI can worsen the eye disease since it temporarily increases the antibody levels. The patient can be protected from this by treatment with Prednisone for a period of time, but that treatment carries risks too. Talk about these issues with your doctor.

There may be a good reason your doctor is recommending RAI over the other two treatments, or it may be just your doctor’s personal preference, but in any case it may not hurt to get another opinion.

My eye disease did worsen considerably following RAI, and while I can’t know for certain what it would have done had I chosen another treatment, I made this choice before it was known that RAI might make my eyes worse. I’d have liked to have a choice, and I think you should too.

The outcome of the eye disease seems to be very unpredictable for each person, but smoking is a definite risk factor for serious eye disease, so if you do smoke, talk to your doctor about a smoking cessation program. As Bobbi said, it’s important to see a good ophthalmologist to monitor the eye disease activity, and normalizing your thyroid levels also will be helpful. Avoiding hypothyroidism especially seems to be important.

Once the eye disease runs its course (which takes between 6-18 months in most cases), some people do see some improvement in their eyes, and others don’t. You can read a lot about the different corrective surgeries available by doing a search on eye surgeries on the search function of this board.

Surgeons can do a lot to help with the disfigurement of the eye disease, but it’s unrealistic to hope to look like we did before the disease, or for our symptoms to all disappear. Dry eyes may be a life-long problem we deal with, and eyelid muscles that are scarred by the disease process may always be stiff and function improperly, contributing to the problems. Still, for the most part the worst problems can be corrected and we can look and feel pretty normal again.

I understand completely how difficult the eye disease is on your self-esteem. I’ve been through all this myself and I hated it, but have had all the surgeries and feel much better about it all now. If you want to talk more about it, feel free to send me an email.

All the best,

Dianne W
NGDF Online Facilitator

[Anonymous]

#1075834

Thank you for your help

[Author]

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