[jstephens]

#1058777

Wishing you luck with the coming surgery. It is my understanding that the actual thyroid levels come down fairly quickly after surgery. The 3,6,8 month time frame is typical for RAI which works incrementally. With surgery the gland is gone, all at once, and not producing hormone. There may be residual thyroid tissue left, which is usually taken care of via RAI when there is cancer present. But the half-life of T4 is just a tad shy of one week, and the half-life of T3 is only three-quarters of one DAY, so once the gland is gone, residual remaining thyroid hormone, still in your body, gets used up very quickly.

You might be able to get another set of minds at work on your question, by going to the thyroid cancer support group, ThyCa. They can be extremely helpful.

[RebeccaJT]

#1169907

Hi J

I think your question was about getting your thyroid under control enough to be able to have surgery? Whilst I don’t know the exact answer to that, I do think they can do it quite quickly. It depends on your levels at the start of treatment and the dose of ATDs they give you, and I believe they also give you an iodine solution immediately pre-op to shut the thyroid down.

I was very poorly last winter, and was going very hyper indeed and I was on 60mg carbimazole (which is equivalent to 600mg PTU) – my endo said usually to shut the thyroid down entirely, they usually give about 40mg. My levels came hurtling down from very toxic to almost hypo in a month. Obviously living through such a rapid climb down in levels is fairly horrible and difficult, as the body has to adjust to a massive shift in hormone levels. However, given the cancer angle I would say keep asking questions until you are clear on the answers. Also the NGDF main website has some excellent factsheets on treatment, you might find more info there. They also have some support groups, and you could also call the office?

It sounds like your experience is very different to mine, but knowing what I know now, I really wish I had been more politely assertive at the beginning of my treatment. Ideally your relationship with your doctor should be a partnership, and your doctor should be listening to you very carefully!

There are lots of people on here who have had total thyroidectomy (I’m due to have the op in the next twelve weeks so I’m learning all this too) so my suggestion would be to search the board index using ‘surgery’ and ‘thyroidectomy’, ‘cancer’ etc and look at past threads. I’ve also sent private messages on here to one or two people I identify with and they have been helpful one to one.

It is extremely good that you have a very experienced surgeon – that is very important. My first consultation with my surgeon was absolutely brilliant, and he answered all of my questions in depth. I’m due to see him again for another pre op assessment and I’m already amassing another list of questions. It might be worth you finding out what the procedure will be and when you will be referred for your first consultation with the surgeon? Just keep asking questions, it’s your body!!

Good luck with everything,

Take care

Rebecca

[webster2]

#1169908

Hi, this is my first post. I am by no means an expert but this was my experience.

I was diagnosed with Graves in June. The RAIU and U/S came back with a high uptake and "ill defined…" etc. My TSH was at 0.02 when I first went on methimazole and a beta blocker. It really helped with the palpitations, not so much for the TSH. That never came down before surgery. I think I saw the ENT about a month after being diagnosed, and surgery was about a month or 6 weeks after that. I had already had half removed years ago. I did have papillary cancer and Hurthle cells present.

I wish the best for your surgery and recovery.

[jstephens]

#1169909

Thank you for the info

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