Ski,
I thank you for your post on autoimmune diseases and heredity. Also for stating that if you have one autoimmune, you have a slightly higher chance of having more. I previously received an e-mail that since this is a Graves site we shouldn’t be discussing other autoimmune diseases.
I believe the correlation is important. I read this site a couple of times a week and have over the last year seen many cases like mine – where the people start getting all these different symptoms that just don’t fit in with Graves, but are told that it takes a long time to heal. Well, it does take a long time to heal from Graves, but there could be a lot more going on with them then just “healing”. Unless they have a super doctor the chances of them getting the proper diagnosis for other autoimmunes, in a reasonable amount of time before it gets bad, is probably low. I told the doctor about the family history, but still they did not want to help me with the additional problems because I was “healing”.
I’m one of those cases: Graves/RA/Lupus?/TED (and it’s only been a little over a year since RAI for Graves and I developed the other 3. I do not associate the other 3 autoimmunes to the RAI, but to the Graves. I believe the RAI was the right thing to do.) This may be rare, but I believe it happens often just by reading the posts.
I could not have made it through Graves this far without this website. I have learned so much from all of you. Can your organization recommend the best place to go for this kind of forum for other autoimmune diseases if we shouldn’t discuss it here. It would be nice to have one site for all.
Trish
