Now What?

[alpine50]

I just found out that my GF was diagnosed with Hashimoto Disease 9 months.She is on a medication that helps. Why she waited to tell me doesn't matter to me right now. What does matter is what can I do to help/support/understand?

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Thank You

[Barb135]

What symptoms does she have?  

Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease, and is incurable, but with the proper medication, can be managed successfully; it's not life threatening, as long as it's treated.  I'm not sure what kind of help you might be referring to; both of you need to research and find out all you can about hypothyroidism, because doctors aren't always willing to test/treat adequately, so the patient has to know about the disease and ask for what they want/need, even be willing to change doctors if one isn't willing to test/treat adequately.  You will need to know symptoms of, both, over and under medication.

Do you know what medication your gf is on, and what dosage?  

Do you have access to her most recent thyroid blood tests, so we can determine whether or not she's getting adequate testing?  If you post test results, be sure to include reference ranges, which vary lab to lab and have to come from her own report.

[alpine50]

Thank you for responding. I'm going to talk to her later but I do know she is taking a thyroid medicine. She mentioned it in conversation and I didn't ask her about it fully.

The more I'm reading about it seems to back up your statement of it being more art than science getting the medication correct.

What can I expect? More patience, understanding..the obvious stuff?

Also, what about long term? What can she expect?

[flyingfool]

Hashi's is the most common cause for low thyroid in the industrialized world.  It is an auto-immune condition where the body thinks the thyroid gland is a foreign invader and as a good immune system does, it attacks the "invader".

Bottom line is the the immune system is slowly reducing the thyroid gland to produce hormone.  So in order to combat that thyroid hormone medication is taken to replace the amount lost so that you feel well.

In concept that is simple.  However getting the exact right dosage that makes you feel well is more of an art than science.  And to compound the problem, MANY Dr's use bad science and test improperly and thus leave many patients feeling less than well.

Best thing to to is understand that the blood tests that are needed are:

- Free T4
- Free T3

TSH will also almost always be tested.  If the Dr is not testing for anything more than TSH, demand that the two Free hormone tests are tested for. If the Dr won't then go find another Dr because TSH cannot be used accurately enough to get most people to feel well.

Also some vitamin deficiencies can also mimic some of the symptoms of low thyroid.  So it pays to have these checked as well.

Vitamin D3
Vitamin B-12
Iron
Ferritin

When and if you have lab test results please post them along with the reference or normal range which usually appear in parenthesis to the right of the tested result value.

Finally, DO NOT accept the Dr telling you that you are "normal" when you still feel like crap.  The reference ranges are created FAR too broad and many people need to be in the middle to upper 1/3 of the range in order to feel well.  So simply being "somewhere" in the range is NOT normal for many people.