[LaurelM]

#1063657

Hi Krystal,

So sorry you have joined the club. For me, it took about 4 weeks on the meds to notice an improvement. By about 6 weeks I was feeling somewhat better. It took about 3 months to feel wellish if not quite my old self. It took about a year to feel competely well. Every person’s recovery is individual.

The beta blocker really helped to mask my symptoms in the early weeks. If you are not on one, consider talking to your Dr about it. Also, many of us have also used antidepressants to cope in the early healing process. You have some seriously out-of-whack body chemisty going on right now. It is OK to ask your Dr’s and your family for extra help. It will get better with treatment. It will just take some time.

Sending wishes for a speedy recovery,
Laurel

[shale72701]

#1063658

Krystal,

I honestly thought I was the only person who was feeling miserable by this disease. I have absolutely no motivation or happiness for life. I did suffer from depression before, but I was always able to snap out of it. And right now I should be having the time of my life, I have great boyfriend, two great kids, an ok job, everyone in my life is healthy, but yet I have been crying because I can’t perk myself up or I cry about mistakes in the past that i have already dealt with. I ask people close to me if I have changed and they say yes, it makes me sad to know that this has affected me that much. I started taking PTU yesterday even though it is a pain in the rear I am going to stick with it and keep trying, my self pity boat left earlier this week and I got kicked off. Ha Ha. I believe we will get better and will go back to living life outside our houses. We may need to make adjustments or find ways to deal with things differently than we did before. I know venting and talking to people has helped me because talking with everyone else who hasn’t been affected by this they don’t understand the severity of this. (sometimes I don’t think the dr does as well). I can’t say anything scientifically about this disease because I just started dealing with it myself. But like I said to myself before when I was depressed or anxious I will not let it defeat me. This just a hurdle we will overcome. Thank you for reading.

Sarah

[Julie3588]

#1063659

Krystal,

Sorry to hear that you’ve been having such a hard time. This disease really can make us feel like miserable wrecks. I have done both the ATD route and RAI. When I was first diagnosed I did a year of methimazole before being weaned off and maintained normal levels for a year before relapsing and ultimately choosing RAI. The first few weeks on the ATDs were completely miserable for me, you’re not alone. I was also suffering from mono at the time so it was kind of a double whammy. I’ve noticed every time my levels are "off" I become really anti-social, I just have no desire to see or talk to anyone. Both times I was hyper, I was exhausted, cranky, and felt empty inside. One of the reasons I chose RAI was because the methimazole made me feel even more hollow and emotionless, though side effects can be very personal. I remember it took about 4 weeks to start to feel better on the ATDs, and about a year before I felt healthy and on the road to recovery. I’m now traveling that same path again as I recover from by second bout of hyper and the RAI. I’ve finally found a stable dose of synthroid a year later.

I really want to emphasize that while I haven’t exactly been at normal levels for the past couple of years, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t gotten my happiness back. Throughout all the ups and downs there have been glimpses of my old self. As time progresses, these glimpses become longer and more frequent. Though I don’t think I’ll ever be exactly the same again, something you mentioned that scares you, I’m not sure that even if I was in perfect health I could return to the "old me". A disease like this has changed my outlook on life so much and increased my appreciation for everything and ability to really live in the movement. Like some of the facilitators have mentioned on the boards, we have to remember that in the time we spend fighting this disease, we also age and grow, so there’s no way to know if where we stand after treatment isn’t where we would have been otherwise.

Best wishes and hope that you start to feel better. Be gentle with yourself. Know that you’re not alone and there is light at the end of the tunnel ” title=”Smile” />

-Julie

[Krystal25]

#1018273

So I am here to vent again after having what I like to call another day of hell. So I am newly diagnosed with GD at the end of September. I am currently taking Methimazole 10MG daily. I have started to feel somewhat better, but still feel like I am on a emotional roller coaster. I have lost sight of who I am and feel like I am constantly outside myself. My doctor tells me this is normal and that it will go away once my levels are regulated. I have become anti social and stay home most of the time. I have a great job and a wonderful family but I haven’t felt happy since the beginning of Sept. I use to be a happy go lucky, energetic, fun loving person and now I feel like hollow inside. I just want this medicine to work so I can go back to my life! I know wishful thinking, but I hate feeling like this. I am wondering how long does it take for the medicine to reach full efficacy? 3-4 weeks? I am schedule to have labs done again at the beginning of Nov to see if the medicine is working. November seems like forever away. I read some post on here, where people say they are still struggling with this disease years later. I cannot see myself living in this state of distress for that long. I also read posts about people who have undergone RAI treatment or surgery and they say it has opened a whole other can of worms. I feel like I should be able to tell my body to knock it off, but I can’t. I feel like I am honestly going insane, even though my doctor and my family tell me it is just the disease. It has become hard to separate the disease from me. I don’t want to become my GD. I also haven’t gotten a regular periods yet since being diagnosed and I think that is starting to take a toll on my body. I just need to know that this will get better, and I will feel like myself again. I have read post of people saying they feel better, but never like they were before. I want my life back and I want to be the person I was before I got diagnosed with GD. Will this happen??

-Thanks for letting me vent!
Krystal

[Kimberly]

#1063660

@ Sarah and Krystal – Please understand that this emotional rollercoaster is a direct result of our thyroid hormones being off kilter. Things *do* get better once our levels have been stabilized!

For more information, you can go to the home page at http://www.ngdf.org and click “Publications”, then click on “Psychosocial & Emotional Effects”, then click on the article “What’s Wrong With Me?” This has some great info on the *emotional* symptoms that tend to go hand in hand with Graves’.

[lhc11]

#1063661

@Krystal and Sarah — I have been exactly where you are. It took a full 8 weeks on methimazole before I felt at all like myself again; in the meantime, I too was beyond miserable, cooped up in my house, unable to do anything (except go to yoga class, which I believe sort of saved my life). I couldn’t read or watch TV because I had no attention span; I couldn’t garden because it made me feel like a failure; I couldn’t go to work because I would have lost my job; I couldn’t talk to friends because I was driving them crazy; I couldn’t eat because I had no appetite; I couldn’t sleep (as we all know)….I mean, really, until my hormones leveled out I was a hollow shell of my former self–hollow is exactly the right word. But it did finally get better after the longest two months of my life (even looking back now, it feels like it was two years), and then I had surgery on June 9th of this year, which went great, and I have felt great ever since. Krystal, regarding your point about what you’ve read online about people saying they’ve never been the same, it might help to remember something one of the facilitators here (I think it was Ski) wrote to me, namely: mostly, people who come to bulletin boards like these are people who are still having difficulty of one sort or another, so one can get the wrong impression of how the numbers skew. People who are fully recovered just go back to living their lives and don’t spend much time posting things on online bulletin boards about autoimmune disorders (unless they are facilitators or, like me, either procrastinating or wanting still to give something back in thanks for the help they were given while they were ill). So don’t assume that other people’s bad experiences will be yours; it’s scary, I know (believe me, I know), but you have to hope for the best, and the chances are that you will actually be fine once the medication really kicks in for you and you are able to make choices about your long-term treatment plans. As for how I feel: like one of the posters above said, I’m definitely not the same as I was before GD. I’m better–and that’s even despite the fact that I’ve recently been dealing with another autoimmune issue (proctitis, which is not especially pleasant, but not life-threatening either, and not related, at least not in any direct way, to GD). Because in addition to feeling well, I just so appreciate NOT being sick, depressed, and out of my mind with hyperthyroidism. And this will happen for you too. Hang in there.

[Bobbi]

#1063662

If you need evidence to support 1hc11’s comment about how the people posting to these boards are the ones newly ill, or having special problems, check back through our archives. This board goes back about 14 or 15 years. You’ll see that the stories NEVER change — but the names do. Once people get well again, they stop dropping in every day. Except for a few of us diehards — like 1hc11 and the moderators here — who try to help you keep things in perspective.

I hope you feel better soon,

[Author]

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