Today's Endo Visit :)

[Guest guest]

It went really well! I took the Dear Doctor letter from the STTM website,

modified to suit my situation, and included the list of symptoms for

hypothyroidism and adrenal insufficiency as well as the article on

depression/mental illness and a copy of my labs. She agreed with everything

I had to talk about except for the 24-hour saliva test. She says that since

it isn't standardized it's a hard test to follow because we don't know what

ranges to follow. She drew blood for my PM cortisol and thyroid bloodwork

and ordered bloodwork for AM cortisol and the 24-hour saliva test through

LabCorp (which my insurance will pay for) because I wanted it (at least

she's listening to me!). They are ordering ACTH and when they receive it

I'll come in and do the ACTH test to confirm adrenal insufficiency. My

heart rate was 104, and she suspects that it's due to too much T3. She

wants to increase my T4 and possibly reduce my Armour after 6 weeks of the

T4 increase. Overall, I'm extremely hopeful. She also cringed that I have

a Mirena IUD, that it causes issues with a couple of hormones (including

DHEA) so she mentioned that it would alter the results of those tests. I

was planning on getting that taken out soon anyway.

I know a lot of you recommend the 24 hour saliva panel as the be all end all

cortisol test. Can you provide me any information I can take back to her to

interpret my results? She's got a colleague who will have some thyroid

research published, something about having the TSH suppressed to .5 being

beneficial (but I've been so overloaded with info at this point I don't

remember the specifics but I'll be asking for a copy when it's done).

I'll update you all when I get the results of my bloodwork!

Janelle