Tamra’s Story

If you have Fibromyalgia, check out Tamra’s very inspiring story about Fibromyalgia that went away!

I contracted a hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection in July of 2007. It left me very weak.

While recovering from the infection, my body began to ache, and then I felt depressed and started having daily panic attacks. My doctor measured my TSH and total T3. My TSH was “normal” (of course!) but my total T3 was 2 points below normal (and if my Free T3 had been done, it would have been miserably low!). But she said it was so close to normal that they wouldn’t treat it and that I shouldn’t worry about it, that my thyroid was fine.

Several months later my thyroid became swollen and looked like a golf ball. This time I was referred to an endocrinologist who told me my Free T3 was “normal” (2.34–the bottom of the range!!!) and my TSH was also “normal”, that goiters were very common, and that my thyroid was, again, fine.

Next, a physical medicine doctor dx me with “fibromyalgia“. I was told there was no known cause and no cure, that the best I could hope for was pain, anxiety & sleep medications. So I was put on Zoloft, Ativan, Ambien & Lyrica.

By this time I had found the STTM website and was convinced my doctors were wrong. First, I tried to convince them to give me thyroid medication, but no luck. I realized I had to find a new doctor, but finding one who would take the right tests and prescribe Natural Desiccated Thyroid wasn’t easy. Doctors are very convinced they’re right. I finally found a doctor who dx me as hypothyroid and gave me T3. ALL MY PAIN WENT AWAY!!! I was so happy I cried, because at times I hadn’t wanted to live–that’s how terrible & relentless the pain can be.

But for me it came too late, as the undiagnosed Hashimoto’s from being told I was normal and fine for so long had turned my previously benign nodules into papillary thyroid cancer. For 3 glorious months I had no pain, but after the thyroidectomy it was like starting over at square one. All the pain came back when they put me on Synthroid. The doctor who’d given me T3 didn’t feel qualified to handle my medical needs since I’d had the surgery, so it took me until January of 2012 to get an Rx for NDT again. By that time, I was so anemic that it took another year before I was out of pain again.

But as I sit here with no fibromyalgia pain, I’m so thankful I found this website. And although I’m still working on resolving the hypo-acquired sleep apnea, I shudder to think that I would have spent the rest of my life like that: Depressed, exhausted, in horrible pain, and hopeless really–all in the name of no-known-cause, no-cure “fibromyalgia”. I only wish I could tell others with the diagnoses of fibromyalgia so they could get better too, and I try to every chance I get.

Thank you for creating STTM and helping me and so many others like me! It’s been like a miracle for me!

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