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Elisabeth’s Story

Thyroid Treatment:
T4/T3

Adding T3 Put Me on the Road to Recovery

I am a 22 year old who has a T3 success story!

I started a blog recently after my coworkers encouraged me to put myself out there. I work at a new social networking aggregator/platform (Sgrouples) that focuses on user privacy, and I have started a support group there for fellow hypothyroid sufferers.

My story began when I was 18 years old and about to start my second year at UC Berkeley when I started to feel unusual fatigue and depression. My health problems piled up, but it wasn’t until I was nineteen that I was diagnosed. I had been noticing symptoms that ranged from the common to the embarrassing, and in order to help myself deal with it all, I did what many other thyroid disease patients do: look to the Internet.

All it took was opening up a browser and researching symptoms of thyroid problems to realise that I wasn’t the only one experiencing such a wide range of issues.

After I began taking T4, I went through the ups and downs of finding the right dose. One year after I took my first dose of Synthroid, I was taking 137 mg of Synthroid and still feeling unusually fatigued! I was told by more than one doctor that I was “fine”, and one endocrinologist told me to talk to a shrink! I couldn’t believe that he had the nerve to insinuate that I crazy. Unfortunately, it was another 12 months until a doctor agreed that a mixture of T4 and T3 hormones was necessary.

After the first dose of Cytomel, I knew I was on the real road to recovery. The lingering depression and fatigue slowly faded away, and I felt like I could lead a normal life again. I’m thankful that there were so many bloggers and thyroid patient activists out there to spread the word about alternative treatments- their efforts gave me the nerve to question my doctors and find a treatment that works.