Choices, Choices

I'm a little behind on keeping the masses up to speed with what's going on with my health.

Last week I went to see my Doctor of O, Osteopathy. I still really love her because she is totally down with me also seeing a Chinese Herbalist. I debrief her of everything he says and vice versa, so it's nice that neither of them harbors overt resentment for the other. :) Dr. D.O. said that she thought it was the perfect meeting of Eastern and Western medicine.

I mainly went in to tell her that I had had some success treating myself as an IBS-D patient (recap--less insoluble fiber, more soluble fiber, peppermint oil, fennel seed sometimes) and to get my blood drawn to see how my body liked being on five Thyroxal pills instead of six.

Happily, last time I went to see her a few months ago I weighed about 108 pounds with jeans, a belt, and a sweater on. This time, in just yoga pants (and a shirt, come on people!), I weighed almost 115! So make fun of my skinniness if you will, I give you permission, but I think I've gained about ten pounds. That's reason to celebrate in my book.

I got my blood tests back a few days ago and I'm a little frustrated with the results. My T3 and T4 numbers are fine, those are the amounts of thyroid hormone actively running around in your bloodstream. My TPO (the antibodies that are around attacking my thyroid) are even lower than they were before, which is great news! The highest they have been was 85 after DD was born, then they dropped to 55, then to 22, and now they are at 15. It doesn't even show up on the lab as abnormal anymore.

The number that frustrates me is my TSH, my Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. This is a number that indicates how hard my pituitary has to work to get my thyroid to produce an adequate amount of thyroid hormone. Ideally, it should be under 2.5. Last time I had it checked it was at 3.1 and last week it was at 3.88. Obviously I had hoped it would be lower.

More TMI--I know I need more thyroid hormone around that 'time of the month' and that's when I got checked. I feel fine on five Thyroxal pills until 'that time' and then I start to feel symptoms of being hypothyroid.

I'm not sure what to do about that. Part of me desperately wants to keep taking Thyroxal and see if I can wean off successfully, but part of me also feels like Thyroxal is just becoming a more expensive stand-in for Levothyroxine or Synthroid.

Eventually, I feel like I am going to just want to get on with my life. There are 90 pills in a bottle, I think, so one bottle ($30) lasts 15 days. That's $60 a month, compared to $20 a month for the Tirosint I was taking prior to this whole experiment.

In any case, I'm still wheat and milk free, still juicing as much as possible (another expensive hobby), and I'm taking some other supplements and herbal crap and....we'll just see what happens. Hopefully no one will be too disappointed if I eventually decide we can't afford Thyroxal and go back to the 'Western' drug...hopefully CAG won't give me the silent treatment.