I was dx with a "rip roaring" case of Graves Disease in July. Waited until August to do RAI so that my new insurance would cover the procedure. Oddly it has been 2 weeks and just now my thryoid is staring to hurt some. I still feel out of breath and need my beta blockers even more than before. Endo thinks it will take a full 8 weeks to start the drift toward hypo. Meanwhile I wait....
Graves Disease 101 Wendy, I hope you feel much better really soon. Graves Disease is an autoimmune disease in which the receptors in the thyroid that receive the message from the brain about how much thyroid hormone to make/release are destroyed, and so the thyroid goes crazy making too much thyroid hormone because it can't "hear" that it has already made more than enough. With too much thyroid hormone, a person's metabolism gets speeded up. The most dangerous part of that is that the heart is sped up and the heart rate can get very high. Beta blockers are intended to treat that. There are three types of treatment for Graves' disease: 1. Radioactive iodine to destroy part or all of the thyroid. 2. Medication that suppresses thyroid function and sometimes induces remission (medication has nasty side effects and if there's no remission they try something else). 3. Surgery to remove all or part of the thyroid. There's also symptom management while you figure out what's happening, where you treat the racing heart with beta blockers, and you treat any other symptoms as they come up. Since Graves' almost never goes away without any treatment, once it is decided that it definitely is Graves' disease, a person or her doctor has to pick one of the options above. Being thyrotoxic and having too much thyroid hormone can be exhausting. It can cause weight loss, hair loss, etc; it causes a tremor (when I was thyrotoxic I was impressed to see and feel my tongue shaking), and racing heart. It can cause dizziness. It can cause psychological symptoms - 100 years ago, before treatment, half of people who were diagnosed with this were manic by the time they were diagnosed, although these days it's a tiny minority.
hope you feel better soon!! I have it too, although I really don't remember how long it took before the RAI worked.
Oh, I'm so sorry to read this. Grave's just sucks. RAI didn't work for me, and I ended up having it removed. Hopefully, you will start feeling better soon.
Sorry it is taking a while to get this straightened out - I had to doses of RAI - my doctor was trying to be very cautious since I was younger and the part of my thyroid that was left started overacting again! Good news is once it is all done - you will feel great again!!!
Hugs, I never had RAI, just had it removed since I had just given birth to my middle son. I really hope you are feeling better soon.
I had a Graves Disease as a child - dx'd when I was around 10 yrs old I think - and I had my thyroid removed when I was 12 or 13. It was a HORRIBLE feeling - sometimes my heart would race so much I would just lie on the sofa - and it would last for hours. I was one of the lucky few who gained weight with the disease too. I hope you are feeling better soon.
I have Graves as well and had my Thyroid removed after an allergic reaction to PTU (I just thought I had a 2 month old cold). It took a bit of time to adjust the meds after that but once we found the right dose I started feeling so much better, and closer to my old self again. Although I'm 100 times more forgetful - mostly about taking my meds - which makes me forget more... I'm sorry about your diagnoise but you'll feel so much better once it's controled.
Thanks for the support. There has been a lot of medical issues in my family right now and lately Graves has been at the bottom. I am hopeful that I feel better soon and that I can regulate the hypothyroid easily when I swing that way.
