I have to go to the endocrinologist today. I am not looking forward to it, of course. The visits to him are rarely ever pleasant. At least he doesn’t draw blood at these appointments…
The last few visits, he’s been pushing for a permanent treatment of my Graves’ Disease instead of encouraging me to try for remission with my medications, diet modifications and exercise. He wants me to have ablation, via a total thyroidectomy (TT) - basically, surgical removal of my entire thyroid. At least he’s not pushing the radioactive iodine (RAI) treatment on me - which requires 2 weeks of isolation from everything after swallowing the radioactive pill… and could increase my eye involvement with the Graves’ antibodies, making my eye problems (swelling of the eyeball itself and tissue and nerves surrounding it and pushing it out of the orbital bone, extremely dry and red eyes, eye migraines, etc…) worse.
Having a TT would make me nervous. There’s a chance for damaged vocal cords and a bigger chance of the parathyroid glands being damaged in the process (there are 4 little tiny parathyroid glands behind the larger thyroid gland). If any piece of the thyroid itself is left behind, I’d need to have surgery again o_0
Even with my thyroid removed, I’d still have Graves’ Disease antibodies in my system (as it’s an autoimmune disease), doing what they do best - wreaking havoc on my eyes, my joints and muscles, among other things… I just wouldn’t have hypERthyroidism anymore, I’d have hyPOthryoidism instead - with all it’s problems lol.
To be considered in remission, my antibody level needs to be below 35. Right now, it’s over 1000. But 1000 is still lower than what it was to start with - over 1500!!!
