Welcome to confusion central.
Just kidding. Darleen, Reading your message it appears that you stopped
taking the PTU six months ago. Are you taking anything now besides alternative
treatments? If not it is not surprising that you are feeling worse. Alternative
treatments when used in conjunction with meds for the thyroid work better. If
you are using only acupuncture yoga and herbs you are not doing yourself any
favor. Docs will normally back you off PTU for awhile to see if you go into
remission. It appears from your post that this is not the case.
Surgery for GD is an option but it is pretty invasive. It usually depends
on the patiants wishes, age, sex etc. It is hard to decide what to do. We all
have to go through the thought of swallowing something atomic that kills
part of you body. Sounds so barbaric I know but the thought of having someone
cut out a part of my body didn’t appeal to me. (After all my eye surgeries I
thought I would be much older when the docs started to take away parts I was
born with) Cost wise and recuperation wise the radiation was the best choice
for me. I cannot tell you what the best choice for you is only you can decide
that one.
Long courses of PTU is also an option. However, the side effects need to
be watched very closely. I had the radiation, my Mom is staying on the PTU and
two Aunts and my grandmother had the thyroidectomy. One other aunt and two cousins
had the radiation. All but one of us is doing well with the treatments we chose.
My Mom will have to choose radiation or surgery soon and I suspect she will do
the atomic cocktail. Write to the National Graves Disease Foundation we have
quite a bit of literiture on the options.
As you probably figured out by now GD runs rampent in my family. Between
grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and parents there are eight of us who have
or had GD. So I feel I can kind of answer the questions on what options worked.
Feel free to give me a call sometime if you want to talk. This goes for
anyone and iif I am not home I will call back collect. Let us know what meds
you are on and we will see what we can do to help.
Regards,
Jake (No more bug eyes) George
Anonymous
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