How can this suffering be ignored?

[MD75]

My daughter suffers with extreme fatigue, bouts of insomnia, very heavy painful periods, daily headaches, dry skin/hair, grey hairs- she's 20!, muscle/joint pains, breathlessness, a period of infertility, periods of depression, dizziness and has gained about 4st in weight she eats a healthy diet. Her tsh was 4.3 and t4 13 she was told this was normal, antibodies weren't tested she was told to forget thyroid disease despite a family history!! No explanation has been given for her symptoms she's existing not living Heartbreaking!! What do you recommend we do?

[Professor John Lazarus]

repeat the blood test and get the antibodies measured. In someone with a family history of thyroid disease this is essential

[sunlady]

She sounds exactly like my daughter, her FT3 and FT4 were well below the reference range and her TSH went from 4.4 to 6.8. We have a family history of thyroid problems but the NHS refused to treat her, saying that according to the guidelines they only treat when the TSH gets to 10. She was unable to cope at university so we had no option but to pay for private treatment. Her cousins abroad were all diagnosed once their TSH reached about 3 and were shocked at the way the NHS treated her. I luckily can afford to pay for her treatment; I can well imagine the heartache that other parents must suffer watching their children’s health deteriorate. It seems very sad that if you can afford to pay you can get well; if you cannot afford to pay then you must continue to suffer until your TSH gets to 10. Why should a young person’s health and future depend on their parent’s bank balance?

[galathea]

Dr Lazarus,

We all know that this is the answer, and in fact we even feel silly asking the question. What we don't know is haow to persuade our doctors that they should be asking for thryroid tests. And when the labs are asked for tests by the doctors, they frequently don't do the ones that have been asked for.

How can this lady persuade her doctor to retest her daughter?

If you would care to run a doctor Education program, I for one would be happy to assist in running educational talks for the local doctors.

Galathea (Amanda)

[MD75]

We asked for antibodies to be checked and was told by our Dr the lab will only test if her tsh is abnormal and she has asked for the tests to be repeated but this has been refused she was told to forget thyroid disease. So how can they be repeated when our Dr won't run the tests? I can't afford to go private but then don't see why anyone should have to go that way when they are clearly ill and are suffering with numerous disabling symptoms!

[galathea]

You can get a full thyroid screen if you deal direct with the lab yourself. Getting a blood draw from a private clinic or the NHS is about £15.

Price for the test is less than £100.... details of labs doing tests on Thyroid patient advocacy and thyroid uk....

At least if you know the results of Free T3, Free T4, TSH and antibodies, you are in a posi to make a clinical judgement, rather than a guess based on limited results....

G