Hello all. I'm a 40yro woman and was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease Hashimoto's thyroiditis back in August. However, now that my thyroid hormone numbers have been brought to normal levels, I'm still suffering from a progressively worsening collection of symptoms. I joke that it's like there's a grab bag of about 20 symptoms, and every day my body is reaching in and grabbing anywhere from 3-10 of them.
Those symptoms include:
* Swings of significant fatigue (like, 3 naps a day + early bedtime, feeling drugged fatigue) and insomnia
* Severe headaches (back of head going forward)--sometimes causing nausea and vomiting; these are becoming more and more frequent
* Joint aches and body aches (throbbing all over)--these are usually daily, but some days (like today) they are a whole lot worse than others
* Mood swings--particularly irritability and depression
* Heart palpitations and "hiccups," sometimes very uncomfortable; this actually was the first problem that sent me to a doc, which resulted in several visits with a cardiologist. The conclusion was my heart itself is fine, but "something" is triggering periods of rapid heart rate. Hashimoto's makes some sense for this.
* Swelling hands and feet
* Tingling tongue (that's just a weird one, relatively new in the last 6mos)
* Fuzzy/foggy headed; feels like I'm under the influence of something when I'm decidedly not
* Feeling of pain and pressure and base of head/neck, often extending into jaw and top of shoulders and neck
* Pressure and tension in chest
* Hair loss
* Upset stomach, loss of appetite, vague nausea
* Swings of constipation and frequent bowel movements
* Dry skin
* Pelvic pain
* Lightheadedness; actually nearly passed out at work in May and took a while to regather myself; this continued off and on for days. I wound up in the ER where they ruled out a heart attack and sent me home.
It's gotten so bad I've been pulled off work. I'm a middle school math and science teacher and I love what I do, but I just couldn't anymore. I hit a wall, and it breaks my heart. But I come home to two young sons (ages 7 1/2 and 3 1/2), and I had no energy left for them. Right now I'm running the gauntlet of specialists and blood tests and such to see if there's something along with the Hashi's.
My bloodwork showed I have an elevated rheumatoid factor of roughly double to high-normal range; normal is something like 0-13, and the two times they checked it, it was something like 26 and change. This, and my continued complaints despite normalizing my thyroid, is what sent me to the rheumatologist.
My OB/GYN, GP, and endocrinologist all suspect fibromyalgia. The rheumatologist does as well. She ran a very large collection of tests on me, checking for multiple other types of antibodies, but she warned me to be prepared for them all to be normal--which would match the fibromyalgia diagnosis. My RF was again elevated, but other than that, everything was normal, as she said. I do not present like I have rheumatoid arthritis at all. My pain is deep in the bones and is everywhere; my joints aren't hot, red, or tender to the touch and never have been. I have my bloodwork results now, but don't go back to the rheumatologist until Nov. 6 to go over the results as well as (I'm anticipating) getting the fibro diagnosis.
The thing is, she did the pressure point test and I wasn't positive for more than like 4 of the points. But, she told me that recent research says the pressure point test has been ruled insufficient in diagnosing fibro. I was able to find a few medical journal articles online detailing this very thing. Still, it makes me circumspect. Does anyone have experience with this sort of result?
Some of the points she pressed were tender, but weren't OW! painful. I didn't tell her the tender ones because I assumed she was looking for the ones that made me yelp (wrists and just below the collarbone did that). Maybe I was in error?
Thanks so much in advance. I'm now exhausted and shall nap. I'm sure you all understand. :|
Those symptoms include:
* Swings of significant fatigue (like, 3 naps a day + early bedtime, feeling drugged fatigue) and insomnia
* Severe headaches (back of head going forward)--sometimes causing nausea and vomiting; these are becoming more and more frequent
* Joint aches and body aches (throbbing all over)--these are usually daily, but some days (like today) they are a whole lot worse than others
* Mood swings--particularly irritability and depression
* Heart palpitations and "hiccups," sometimes very uncomfortable; this actually was the first problem that sent me to a doc, which resulted in several visits with a cardiologist. The conclusion was my heart itself is fine, but "something" is triggering periods of rapid heart rate. Hashimoto's makes some sense for this.
* Swelling hands and feet
* Tingling tongue (that's just a weird one, relatively new in the last 6mos)
* Fuzzy/foggy headed; feels like I'm under the influence of something when I'm decidedly not
* Feeling of pain and pressure and base of head/neck, often extending into jaw and top of shoulders and neck
* Pressure and tension in chest
* Hair loss
* Upset stomach, loss of appetite, vague nausea
* Swings of constipation and frequent bowel movements
* Dry skin
* Pelvic pain
* Lightheadedness; actually nearly passed out at work in May and took a while to regather myself; this continued off and on for days. I wound up in the ER where they ruled out a heart attack and sent me home.
It's gotten so bad I've been pulled off work. I'm a middle school math and science teacher and I love what I do, but I just couldn't anymore. I hit a wall, and it breaks my heart. But I come home to two young sons (ages 7 1/2 and 3 1/2), and I had no energy left for them. Right now I'm running the gauntlet of specialists and blood tests and such to see if there's something along with the Hashi's.
My bloodwork showed I have an elevated rheumatoid factor of roughly double to high-normal range; normal is something like 0-13, and the two times they checked it, it was something like 26 and change. This, and my continued complaints despite normalizing my thyroid, is what sent me to the rheumatologist.
My OB/GYN, GP, and endocrinologist all suspect fibromyalgia. The rheumatologist does as well. She ran a very large collection of tests on me, checking for multiple other types of antibodies, but she warned me to be prepared for them all to be normal--which would match the fibromyalgia diagnosis. My RF was again elevated, but other than that, everything was normal, as she said. I do not present like I have rheumatoid arthritis at all. My pain is deep in the bones and is everywhere; my joints aren't hot, red, or tender to the touch and never have been. I have my bloodwork results now, but don't go back to the rheumatologist until Nov. 6 to go over the results as well as (I'm anticipating) getting the fibro diagnosis.
The thing is, she did the pressure point test and I wasn't positive for more than like 4 of the points. But, she told me that recent research says the pressure point test has been ruled insufficient in diagnosing fibro. I was able to find a few medical journal articles online detailing this very thing. Still, it makes me circumspect. Does anyone have experience with this sort of result?
Some of the points she pressed were tender, but weren't OW! painful. I didn't tell her the tender ones because I assumed she was looking for the ones that made me yelp (wrists and just below the collarbone did that). Maybe I was in error?
Thanks so much in advance. I'm now exhausted and shall nap. I'm sure you all understand. :|