a rollercoaster...

I swear, I feel sometimes like my life is a rollercoaster. Today we are going downhill, faster than i really want, and screaming on the inside (because I don't think anyone around me at the office would appreciate the actual screaming).

I went to go see the new endocronologist today...at this point I was headed up the big hill, and I kinda knew what was going to happen, but dreading it actually occurring.

I waited for 2 1/2 hours to see her. yes, which is like going up that hill VERY slow. Then she came in and it was like I crested that top and I started coming down really fast.

The long and the short of it is this: the medicine that my old endo put me on is basically something that you can only be on for two years or less in hopes that it tricks your body into working right. The reason you can only be on it for 2 years is that it can cause liver and kidney damage. Oh, and it drops your white blood cell count really low which is dangerous. (some of which I knew, some of which I didn't really know). Just so you know, it has been 8 months, and it has kept me constant, but hasn't stabilized to take me off of it. If it doesn't work, you are back to square one - where your only choices are basically killing your thyroid with radioactive iodine or surgery, where you get a pretty little scar on your neck.

She thinks that it was not the "appropriate" choice to take this course of action due to the side effects of the medicine - and as we discussed - the emotional rollercoaster of your thyroid being right, then too low, then too high and all over the place. She basically said my "quality" of life would have been much better had i just "killed" the thyroid.

Then we started talking about Graves disease and she is questioning that - since I know I didn't have one of the tests and I told her about when I was in the hospital the other doctors questioning it becuase they didn't see the bloodwork. ANYWAY, so she is re-testing me for that. She did say that if you have that anti-body, then you are at a higher risk for getting other auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, etc later in life.

So now she is going to go back and run all of the tests and look at all my old tests and we are going to come up with a plan. I think that plan right now is to take the radioactive iodine and kill the thyroid....the surgery is an option, but I don't want to take that road if I don't have to.

If we do kill it, I can't be around babies or pregnant women for a week. Knowing that, other people probably won't want to be around me either! I mean, if it is bad for them, how could it be good for anyone else! ha!

So that is the long and the short of it. *sigh* its not over yet. but I will be REALLY glad when it is.