Hyperthyroid

[jen931]

I am hyperthyroid with borderline T3 toxicosis.  My TSH is 0.01 and am taking PTU which is helping a lot.  The trouble is my heart is skipping beats and it scares the hell out of me.  I had an ECG which is normal but it still scares me when the missed beats start.  If I don't eat for a few hours I start trembling.  I have been like this for 3 years but only got diagnosed in August as doctors wouldn't listen.  My tsh over the last 3 years was around 0.4 so doctors kept telling me I had anxiety issues and it wasn't my thyroid causing the symptoms although it's multi-nodular.  The only time I felt normal was after an fna of one of the nodules my tsh went up to 1.2 for 3 weeks and I felt great.  It then dropped to 0.4 and the symptoms returned.  Finally in August it crashed to 0.01 and the doctors listened and stopped this anxiety rubbish.  My body is in pain neck, back and shoulders.  Is this normal to get pain and missed heart beats? How long does it take on meds to get back to normal?  I have had enough - 3 years of misery - I want my life back.  I feel so ill that I won't even drive without another driver being in the car or I start to panic.

[Roxanne862]

Hello Jen, I suffer from Graves Disease and come from a family with a long history of Thyroid problems.  It is possible to have Graves Disease and go from Hyper to Hypo.  I am one of those people. Brief periods of Hypothyroidism. When my heart was beating 160 plus a minute and I began shaking like a person with Parkinsons Disease also, after going from 155 Pounds to 112 was I diagnosed with GD.  GD is a walk in the park compared to the WRONG choices of treatment I took afterwards. Like you, wanting my life back, and fast I took RAI. Within weeks, my eye problems began, this was in Oct of 08 and I am still in a active war with my Graves Opthamology.  Not only is it disfiguring, it is dangerous to other individuals.  In Europe they isolate the individula who has been given RAI . Here in the states they toss you out the door as fast as possible. Then you are left to fix the end results. I am still in the process of trying to correct my new Radio Active Iodine Look and it is not glamorous. Take you time. Do not get rushed into anything you may later regret. Take a Natural Approach never taking the Medical Communities answers as Matter of Fact because there is so very much they themselves do not know. Just take time to do your own research and anything you do not uinderstand ask , then come in here and ask the Good Doctors their opinion BEFORE you make the same mistakes so many of us in here have done. You hold all the poower and control in your healing process so take the wheel and learn to drive knowing you control it.
I wish you nothing but the best in your road to healing.

[yankeeRN]

I understand your frustration with doctors brushing all off saying it is anxiety----very frustrating .  The anxious feeling/panic attack feeling  (that you have since you were diagnosed with hyperthyroidism)  is caused by the hyperthyroid and that is what needs to be treated the thyroid--I am sure that there are a lot of people walking around with hyperthyroid that are labeled anxiety cases---it is never good to treat just symptoms--must always treat the cause of the symptoms...for example if someone has a fever and just takes tylenol to supress the fever but doesn't treat the route of the problem which  might be an infection then the infection with get worse kinda like the thyroid problem.

[yankeeRN]

The skipped beats , the pounding heart and if you have the spurts of rapid rate too are all very scarey feeling---I have felt the same and have hyperthyroidism.  You also mention the trembling if you don't eat every few hours--I also felt the same--with hyperthyroidism---- your metabolism is so rapid that food just moves much faster through the gastrointestinal tract much quicker than normal and it will make you hungry and can make you shakey.  I also had shakey hands even without the hunger but when I was hungry it just intensified the shakiness.  One of my first symptoms was hand tremors--I thought it was from my morning coffee--I only had one cup.   The PTU will help but can take a few weeks to get the right dose ...it dose work though. Hang in there:) Are you on a beta blocker?   you might want to check with your md about a low dose till the PTU starts to kick in more--it will stop the panic attacks, decrease the hand tremors and decrease the skipped beats.  I am not a pill person but the beta blocker and the PTU saved my life.  I am now weaned off the beta blocker and just on the PTU because my levels  total t4 is in the normal range for me----I feel the best I have in years..so there is hope :)  Have a nice day :)

[jen931]

My antibodies are normal.  I have borderline T3 toxic.  My FT3 and FT4 fall in the high normal bracket but my TSH was 0.0.  Am now on PTU and got extreme dizziness the other evening and couldn't walk.  Ended up at the ER with extreme shaking and shivering and extremely cold.  Left me feeling unwell for a couple of days but am getting over it now.  Thyroid scan shows the main nodule had haemorrhaged.

[Barb135]

Yes, pain and irregular heart beats are common with thyroid issues.

Have you been tested for the Free T3 and Free T4 hormones?  These are the actual thyroid hormones and are much more important than TSH, with FT3 correlating best with symptoms.  If you've  had those tested, please post the results, with reference ranges, as the ranges vary lab to lab, so must come from your report.  

I'd also wonder if you've had thyroid antibody tests done.  Since you are hyper, testing for Graves would be the first thought; the definitive test for Graves Disease is the Thyroid Stimulating Immunoglobulin (TSI), but you should get tested for Hashimoto's Thyroiditis.  Those tests would be Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies (TPOab) and Thyroglobulin Antibodies (TGab).  

While Graves Disease is most often associated with being hyper, many with Hashimoto's can swing from hyper to hypo, before finally settling into hypo permanently, which is why I suggest getting tested for both.

The trembling, when you don't eat for a few hours, could have to do with low blood sugar, rather than thyroid. .