Elaine - tattoos and labs/dosage question

October 31, 2003

Hi Elaine,

I know my posts often tend to be a bit wordy, so I'll try to keep it to just the

facts, ma'am. :-)

I'm planning on getting a tattoo, but before I do I just wanted to see if you

knew of any reasons as a Graves patient to NOT have one. I did call the tattoo

parlour, and the guy I spoke to seemed very knowledgeable. He said the ink (I'm

sticking with black) is made of pigments consisting of carbon and water, which

is suspended in a liquid composed of glycerine, propalyne glycol, alcohol and

distilled water. With a smallish tattoo (the kind I'm getting) your body only

absorbs about 1/2 tsp of the liquid in the dye. He said this dissapates

throughout your system and passes thru your liver as any thing else your body

absorbs will, and he wasn't aware of anyone having trouble with these.

The only cautions he indicated were to keep the area clean and no swimming for 2

weeks to avoid infection.

My second question is given my lastest lab results, and the fact that I think

I'm a teensy bit hypo, do you think it would be a good idea to decrease my dose

down to 2.5 miligrams of Tap daily? I'm currently on 5....but as you'll see from

my labs below, my body did seem to be wanting to inch it's way back up on it's

own. Should I give it a chance to try to do this? Or is it better to seize the

bull by the horns? :-) My endo said since all my labs were normal he was keeping

me on my current dose and would see me in 2 months with new labs then. Here's my

last 2 labs:

10/9/03 9/8/03

T3, Total 110 (range 60-181) T3, Total 75 (range 60-181)

T-3 uptake 32 (range 22-35) Same

T3 Free 305 (range 230-420) T3 Free 276 (range 230-420)

T-4 Free 1.1 (range 0.8-1.8) T-4 Free 1.0 (range 0.8-1.8)

TSH 0.63(range>20 years .40-5.50) TSH 0.04 (range>20 yrs .40-5.50)

TIA for your always wise opinions and insights. Have a wonderful day!

the other

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