[mojomom]

in reply to: And so it begins… #1071562

Blessed,

I made the decision to go with RAI last fall and do not regret the decision, I just wish I had done it earlier. A routine blood test several years ago showed that I was hyper, but I was not diagnosed with GD at the time and really *thought* I was not having any symptoms. I was prescribed ATDs but after taking them for a while I went off them. I had one normal test after I was off them and forgot about the whole thing. Last spring/summer I started losing lots of weight and muscle strength, not to mention shakiness/nervousness and exhaustion. My daughter was getting married, I was/am in a stressful occupation and I just wrote it off to stress, not enough physical activity and menopause. So I ignored it. Of course, it got worse and I experienced a couple of frightening eposodes of severe dizzyness. More blood work and a thyroid scan confirmed GD. I immediately opted for RAI in September. It took a while for it to work — I was still very hyper 6 weeks post RAI — and I had to go on back on ATDs for a couple of weeks, but eventually the RAI worked and I went very hypo. It then took several months to find the the correct dosage of Thyroid Hormone to bring my levels back to normal. But now that levels are normal, I realize that I was experiencing more symptoms and feeling far worse than I knew for a long time. It is really true sometimes that you don’t know how sick you were until you get better. That is really the point of my post — don’t think you aren’t having symptoms — they may have grown so gradually that you don’t know what it like to feel normal anymore. In any case, I’m doing great and can tell a huge difference! I still hope to continue rebuilding muscle strength, but I can already tell that I’ve rebuilt a lot. An objective measurement for me is that we went on two ski trips this year. In December, I could only ski a few easy runs without my legs wearing completely out. By our March trip, I had regained so much muscle strength that I could ski all day. Just my story, but I hope it helps.

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