Hopefully, those of you who read this Blog have also read the page titled GIVE ME A BREAK, because I just added #37 of another HILARIOUSLY RIDICULOUS comment made by a medical-school-trained doctor!! hahahahaha. Though we can laugh, it’s also SO SAD!!!!!! No wonder we have had to figure things out for ourselves! GIVE ME A BREAK!
It’s pure and unadulterated CRAZY MAKING. You are on T4-only meds like Synthroid or Levoxyl. You have problem after problem after problem. You go to the doctor who runs the TSH, and he states emphatically “You are normal”.
“I am normal?? Then WHY do I feel like CRAP??”
The above is exactly and precisely what happened to me for more than 17 years while on Synthroid and later Levoxyl. I suffered immensely when I would do anything physical–pounding heartrate, feeling hot, excruciating insomnia, and fatigue SO profound that I thought I would DIE from it. And……I was always told I was “normal”, I was “adequately treated” and that there was no explanation for my symptoms.
Or take the scenario of a gal who recently contacted me in the deepest state of frustration. She had started on Armour over a month ago, has very suppressed adrenals which she is attempting to correct with adrenal support, yet she is flipflopping between hypo and hyper (a sign that she’s not on enough adrenal support, and/or her antibodies still have control). She is also suffering at night with “shaking severe heart palpitations”.
Yet, when she goes to the doctor, he states “your pulse is normal” and he dismisses her concerns and symptoms. And she states “If I go to the emergency room, they will run a TSH and say I am normal which is what they have done for years. I just cannot make myself go back there. I would rather just die than tell me I am normal. I am scared and do not know where to go or what to do.”
Unfortunately, there is hardly a thyroid patient around who doesn’t COMPLETELY understand the above feelings stated by this patient.
It is profoundly and sadly remarkable that the very professionals we seek out to help us, end up keeping us sick because they make ink spots on a piece of paper more important than symptoms…or they fail to listen to and reasonably consider that something else needs treatment–in her case, her adrenals!! We have not been “normal”!! Another good reason this site exists: because doctors fail us over and over, and we, as patients have had to figure it out ourselves, and pass it along. And thankfully, there can be a growing doctors out there who will LISTEN to us!
This morning, I received an email from a friend with a link to a Medscape article by A.P. Weetman , titled “Whose Thyroid Hormone Replacement is it Anyway?” Professor Weetman is the Dean of the School of Medicine, University of Sheffield in the UK.
And as I started the read, my internal warning bells sounded immediately with the second sentence: “We have robust assays to diagnose the condition and an effective replacement in the form of synthetic thyroxine.”
OK, this is going to be an article full of delusional hot air, I concluded. But I was wrong. The information in this article proceeded to turn into nothing less than condescending and arrogant medical bullcrap. In other words, it not only stunk, it REEKED.
Granted, the article starts off well-informed about the brilliant 4-point petition being lodged by patients in the UK: 1) Over-reliance on thyroid blood tests and a total lack of reliance on signs, symptoms, history of the patient and a clinical appraisal.
2)The emotional abuse and blatant disregard by the majority of general practitioners and endocrinologists over the suffering experienced by untreated/incorrectly treated thyroid patients and their lack of compassion over the fate of these patients.
3) Stubbornness of general practitioners and endocrinologists to treat patients suffering from hypothyroidism with a level of medication that returns the patient to optimum health. In addition the unwillingness to prescribe alternate thyroid treatment for patients on individual grounds… such as Armour thyroid.
4) The ongoing reluctance to encourage debate or further research on hypothyroidism.’
It continues with awareness of Broda Barnes and Durrant-Peatfield, and mentions that “access to information by patients has increased vastly due to the Internet.”
But once the article moves beyond the above, it takes a steep downward dive into condescending pig slop. Why do some patients feel so dissatisfied with and so mistrustful of standard medical advice, it asks? Because we have “functional somatoform disorders” (i.e. DSM-IV code number 300.81). In other words, we are mentally ill, folks. We are totally and completely delusional and the symptoms we have ALL experienced, either from being untreated, or while on T4-only medications, are all in our heads.
And it’s all part of what is known as the “healthism phenomenon”–the latter which it described into ad nauseum detail, and is followed by an ignorant analysis of the TSH.
The article then concludes that physicians, especially Endocrinologists, need to avoid “thyroid hormone treatment of euthyroid individuals”, and continue with “replacement with synthetic thyroxine as the standard, rather than Armour thyroid extract.”
Cough.
Let me explain what this site is about. It is a compilation of the experience of thousands upon thousands of thyroid patients who HAD ALL THE DELUSIONAL, SOMATIC SYMPTOMS that Weetman claims we experienced, BUT who had those same DELUSIONAL, SOMATIC SYMPTOMS totally erased when we switched to Armour and ignored the TSH. Hmmm. Anyone laughing yet?
Because though this patronizing article is frighteningly narrow minded and downright stupid, and though we all know there are Endocrinologists who do and will take the same stance, this mental posture only serves to reveal the high-minded, cowardly failure to really LISTEN to patients. And that, my friends, is why you can only LAUGH at articles like this.
Because thankfully, there IS a growing body of courageous and inwardly secure physicians and medical professionals who treat the PATIENT, not ink marks on a piece of paper. They have no need to see patients as psychiatric half-wits in order to exalt their position.
And the bottom line is this: WE know the difference. WE have lived it. WE are patients who have figured it out ON OUR OWN, and it’s time for doctors who take this stance and any like-minded colleagues to have the courage to consider that patients JUST MAY HAVE WISDOM about their own bodies that your lab tests, your medical school education, and your dogmatic pontifications do not.
STOP the thyroid madness!!
Ever seen a movie about a zombie?? They’re those empty-eyed, soul-less looking beings that seem to be totally automated without one iota of thought to what they do. And THAT is how a doctor behaves when he looks at a thyroid lab result yet TOTALLY ignores how you FEEL.
On another forum recently, a gal posted that for the first time in over a year, she is feeling almost normal again. Her hair shedding has improved tremendously, her brain fog has lifted, and her metabolism has decided to work again. Additionally, she has just recently been able to lose 10lbs. And it’s all because of Armour.
Yet……because her TSH was .01, and her free T3 was one point below the top of the range, her doctor thinks she is overmedicated. And she now laments “It has taken me so long to get this far. I do not want to go back.”
So here we have a thyroid patient who has PROGRESS on Armour…yet because she has a zombie doctor who thinks black ink marks on a piece of paper are much more important than how she FEELS…she will be forced to feel bad once again…or like SO MANY thyroid patients, she’ll have to self-treat to get that efficacy of being on Armour.
Doctors, you repeatedly call Armour inconsistent, unreliable and dangerous. But the inconsistency, unreliability and danger lies in YOU and your failure to look BEYOND the lab test. As Mary Shoman has aptly stated “We are patients, NOT lab values!!”
And as Janie says, “Stop the thyroid madness!!” It’s not working! It never has! It still doesn’t!”
Sometimes when you think you’ve heard it all, you find out–you haven’t.
There are a plethera of puny and particularly pitiful excuses that doctors give for not prescribing Armour:
1) It only works for a few
2) It’s unreliable
3) It’s dangerous
4) It’s not consistent from dose to dose
5) It’s outdated
6) It’s not accepted as a medical standard of practice
7) It’s unregulated
And now….TAH-DAHH…#8: It’s not “mainstream”. Yup, that was said to a friend of mine this week who visited her doctor. It was their excuse for not prescribing Armour at that clinic.
Well gee……this medication that is “unreliable, dangerous, inconsistent from dose-to-dose, outdated, not the medical standard of practice, unregulated and not mainstream“….is saving and enhancing the lives of THOUSANDS of patients who have chosen to ignore your negative and brainless pronouncements.
Armour works. Get over it.