Odd pattern when weaning - I'll be fine, then have some sort of mini-crisis, then be fine again..

January 22, 2008

I'm having a odd symptom pattern with my IsoCort wean - which is

was NOT expecting. I'll be fine or just SLIGHTLY worse for about 3-5

days, then I'll have some sort of " mini-crisis " (the constipation,

speech, etc). Then I'll stress dose with a bit of IC and/or Armour

and that will go away, and then I'll be " almost fine " again, even at

a lower IC (and Armour dose). I'm thinking that because I'm reducing

the Armour along with the IC (about 1/8-1/4 grain per pill IC taken

out of a dose), my body can somehow cope a little with the reduced

cortisol because the main user of it (thyroid) is gone? Does this

make sense?

Another odd thing is that right at the beginning of the wean, I

think I had a mild Hashi's attack for about two days ('fullness' in

throat, a bit of a warm feeling, slightly enlarged, slightly tender

feeling [perhaps that's just because it was bigger]) I increased my

selenium to 300 mcg for those two days (200 in the morning, 100 at

night), and that might have shortened it or made it go away (or just

reduced it - I assume the gland can be attacked and one doesn't feel

anything if it's low-level enough). But that was when I was still on

my full 3 gr Armour (total) and only 20mg cortisol total instead of 26.

SHOULD I be reducing the Armour at the same time as cortisol? Val

said never to increase thyroid witout increasing cortisol, or when

lowering cortisol, so I would assume that reducing it in parallel

would be reasonable. But this is going to through my thyroid results

from the saliva test off (although it might give me an impression of

whehter the Hashi's might have gotten a bit better during treatment),

and it might even through the antibody test off. Although I don't

really care about that - I assume I have them, as it's the most

common form of hypoT, and with the diabetes T1 already there it's

almost a given, and it doesn't change the prognosis or treatment at all.

Jim

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