Should Mental Recovery Take This Long?

[Skylark 938]

That sounds close to my numbers skylark. My TSH was 2.2 and my free T4 was in the lower range I believe. When u say you don't feel well what do you mean. Are you still able to do things and enjoy life?

Wow, that was my TSH exactly. Mine went over five last summer. Dr. started me on a little more T4 and a little T3 but I was still depressed. Numbers were TSH at 2.2, low-normal T4. I didn't have a lot of physical symptoms but I was so depressed my Dr. started me on wellbutrin for my safety. It popped me right out of the depression but antidepressants wreck my sleep even in low doses so I can't stay on them. A couple weeks after the wellbutrin I decided to take the second half of my T3 at night - it gives me tremor if I take the whole 25 mcg at once. That immediately ended the major depression and I was able to go off the wellbutrin but I am still apathetic/foggy/dizzy/memory problems. We bumped up my T4 once more; now I am possibly overmedicated becasue my TSH is super-low. Argh. At least I'm not depressed on top of the fog.

Am I able to enjoy life? Meh. Most days I'm so apathetic I really don't give a flip. I sit in front of the computer and post endlessly here because it seems like too much effort to go outside. Anyone wonder why I'm posting so much? It's because I can't muster the motivation to do much of anything, or the will to care about doing nothing. Work and social interactions are hard because I have trouble concentrating. I try to hold a conversation and can't come up with words. I sit at my desk and sometimes I'm so dizzy I don't want to take my hands off. I can't hold ideas in my mind - things slip away from me. I don't want company because I just feel generally "off", though if I force myself into going out the distraction is usually helpful. I did have two precious almost-normal days this weekend until I ate the breakfast that clobbered me again Monday morning. I went to the farmer's market, mall-crawled, and went out to dinner with friends like a normal person. What little energy and motivation I have is channeled into figuring out what's wrong since as usual my doctor is useless.

As well as thyroid, it's partly other food intolerances. I have discovered that dairy makes me horribly foggy and depressed a day or two after I eat it. I had a huge, fast reaction to Monday's breakfast, not sure what got me yet. I think everything went to pieces after an antibiotic I had to take last spring. Leaky gut could explain most of what I am experiencing including the upswing in thyroid autoimmunity, so I'm working with GAPS diet (kinda, sorta, it's hard as hell to stick to) in order to see if I can start healing my gut.

I'm also seeing a TCM practitioner and getting acupuncture. It might be helping, plus she is helping me de-chemical my lifestyle which is definitely helping. Organics, low-toxicity cleaners, shampoo, detergent, that sort of thing.

[bbdailey 1]

Wow, that was my TSH exactly. Mine went over five last summer. Dr. started me on a little more T4 and a little T3 but I was still depressed. Numbers were TSH at 2.2, low-normal T4. I didn't have a lot of physical symptoms but I was so depressed my Dr. started me on wellbutrin for my safety. It popped me right out of the depression but antidepressants wreck my sleep even in low doses so I can't stay on them. A couple weeks after the wellbutrin I decided to take the second half of my T3 at night - it gives me tremor if I take the whole 25 mcg at once. That immediately ended the major depression and I was able to go off the wellbutrin but I am still apathetic/foggy/dizzy/memory problems. We bumped up my T4 once more; now I am possibly overmedicated becasue my TSH is super-low. Argh. At least I'm not depressed on top of the fog.

Am I able to enjoy life? Meh. Most days I'm so apathetic I really don't give a flip. I sit in front of the computer and post endlessly here because it seems like too much effort to go outside. Anyone wonder why I'm posting so much? It's because I can't muster the motivation to do much of anything, or the will to care about doing nothing. Work and social interactions are hard because I have trouble concentrating. I try to hold a conversation and can't come up with words. I sit at my desk and sometimes I'm so dizzy I don't want to take my hands off. I can't hold ideas in my mind - things slip away from me. I don't want company because I just feel generally "off", though if I force myself into going out the distraction is usually helpful. I did have two precious almost-normal days this weekend until I ate the breakfast that clobbered me again Monday morning. I went to the farmer's market, mall-crawled, and went out to dinner with friends like a normal person. What little energy and motivation I have is channeled into figuring out what's wrong since as usual my doctor is useless.

As well as thyroid, it's partly other food intolerances. I have discovered that dairy makes me horribly foggy and depressed a day or two after I eat it. I had a huge, fast reaction to Monday's breakfast, not sure what got me yet. I think everything went to pieces after an antibiotic I had to take last spring. Leaky gut could explain most of what I am experiencing including the upswing in thyroid autoimmunity, so I'm working with GAPS diet (kinda, sorta, it's hard as hell to stick to) in order to see if I can start healing my gut.

I'm also seeing a TCM practitioner and getting acupuncture. It might be helping, plus she is helping me de-chemical my lifestyle which is definitely helping. Organics, low-toxicity cleaners, shampoo, detergent, that sort of thing.

So you do you feel better on the thyroid medication or you are still feeling tired/apathetic/etc? I too had a TSH of 5 one time but the rest have been inbetween 1.9-3 or so. The more I read a think about it I start to think that I may need the thyroid medication. Like I said before I was actually feeling better for the first time on the medication but then I had a colonoscopy and 5 days later I became very depressed. I have no idea if it was the medication or the colonoscopy. Could a colonoscopy mess up your thyroid? But it confuses me why I never felt better the second time on the medication. The only thing I can think of is maybe after the colonoscopy my thyroid function got worse and I needed a higher does?(And that is probably a total shot in the dark). I have an appointment next week with the doctor so I will talk to him about it. I know he is going to hate me because I have gone on and off of the medication twice already and Im sure he is going to push for antidepressants over the thyroid medication.

[eatmeat4good 313]

If he is a good Dr. he won't hate you. He should understand that you are miserable and trying to feel better and making the best decisions you can for yourself. The thyroid is tricky and they have a hard time regulating meds anyway, so don't apologize, just tell him you were miserable and you suspected the meds and now you think you would like to take them again. They are there to help you. You have a right to make decisions for your body. You are in a health struggle that is multi-faceted and it was a logical suspicion you had. The Dr. should understand that you are a partner in your own health decisions and until this thing is figured out, the two of you work together.

In my case, I was treated with antibiotics for what was really Celiac DH skin rash. After the 5th antibiotic didn't work I said I wanted to try anti-viral meds for like $300 a month with no insurance. We did that for 3 months with no improvement. Then we tried anti-fungal meds and for whatever reason my rash seemed to be clearing but slowly. I wanted to stay on them but the Dr. refused. I was infuriated because it was the only thing that had helped me or so I thought. In reality I probably had eaten low gluten for some of those days and the sores started to improve. Anyway, I went to another Dr. to get anti-fungals for 2 more months to see if that would work. It didn't. I started getting terrible migraines again and the second Dr. would not give me the medication that worked which was a narcotic. So I had to eat my words and go back to the first Dr. because I now needed medication he knew I needed. I just reported that I had gone to another Dr. for the anti-fungals and took them for 2 months but it didn't work. I said, I know you didn't agree with that, but I was desperate to feel better and I had to try. He smiled and nodded like he understood. He was fine with it as long as it wasn't his decision and his license on the line. We treated my migraines with Dilaudid for several more months until I found Celiac.com and then I went to him and said Hey Doc, I have like 299 symptoms of Celiac...the only one I don't have it constipation...do you think this might be DH? He said, Yeah, I bet that is what you have. I was mad, happy, sad, etc. because he wasn't proactive at all about diagnosing, but in the end I got the diagnosis so I am happy. It was a long struggle with mistakes on his part and on my part, but that is life. We are human. You are trying. I don't know why I wrote all that, but I think my point is, don't feel like you don't have a right to decide not to take a medication. You have every right in the world. It is your body. Just explain yourself to your Dr. and he really should be able to comprehend your struggle. You express yourself very well here...I'm sure you can explain this to your Dr. and get his assistance in this matter. If not, and he really is mad or has an attitude, then you might need a new Dr. Just hoping for the best for you.

[Skylark 938]

So you do you feel better on the thyroid medication or you are still feeling tired/apathetic/etc? I too had a TSH of 5 one time but the rest have been inbetween 1.9-3 or so. The more I read a think about it I start to think that I may need the thyroid medication. Like I said before I was actually feeling better for the first time on the medication but then I had a colonoscopy and 5 days later I became very depressed. I have no idea if it was the medication or the colonoscopy. Could a colonoscopy mess up your thyroid? But it confuses me why I never felt better the second time on the medication. The only thing I can think of is maybe after the colonoscopy my thyroid function got worse and I needed a higher does?(And that is probably a total shot in the dark). I have an appointment next week with the doctor so I will talk to him about it. I know he is going to hate me because I have gone on and off of the medication twice already and Im sure he is going to push for antidepressants over the thyroid medication.

I am not clinically depressed or horribly tired the way I was, but I am still apathetic/dizzy/foggy.

It typically takes 6-8 weeks for a new dose of thyroxine to work, so you were never on it long enough to really stabilize. Also with Hashimoto's your thyroid function can really shift around and even periods of hyperthyroidism are possible. It is conceivable a colonoscopy could have worsened the autoimmunity if it caused some inflammation. The bowel cleansing you go through is really hard on your body.

[newme906 0]

My mental status didn't recover until I went on a multivitamin/mineral/trace element supplement and lots of fish oil. I had been gluten-free for a year and was still bipolar. I also took probiotics for about six months to be sure I was absorbing the supplement. It took about four months for me to come out of the fog, and I felt a lot worse before I felt better. The burst of nutrition messed with my brain chemistry at first, and gave me candida problems on top of it. Once I adjusted, killed the yeast with Threelac and herbs, and went through the dieoff, my mental health completely turned around.

I think I was just too deficient to heal on my own from years and years of malabsorption. Unless you're eating carefully farmed organic food, you won't necessarily get what you need from food any more. Industrial agriculture has stripped much of the nutrition out of the soil. The supplement I use is called EMPowerPlus from http://www.truehope.com .

You should also probably talk to a doctor about vitamin D, B12, and thyroid testing.

I am 8 weeks into my diagonosis of Celiacs - been gluten free - still feeling foggy, my Dr is running tests on everything. Feeling that brain fog - disoriented - and tired.....

Getting B12 shots once a week for the first 4 weeks - now on once every 2 weeks -barely make it to the end of the 2nd week. Waiting for blood test results - hoping things get better. Family members and coworkers think I'm crazy.

At least I see that I am not alone.