New to Hashi's

[Emily]

hello-

What a blessing it is to find this discussion forum. I am brand new to this Hashimoto forum and am hoping to gain from others experiance. I am also new to dealing with hypothyroidism. I was diagnosed with it this past November and have been bouncing between .088-100 mg synthroid. I have not been able to get to the point of feeling normal. My legs (calves) are extremely sensitive and on my good days they feel like I just completed a lower leg work out. I've been keeping a journal of my feeling and my levels of synthroid--I have been on 88's for the past month and have not been able to shake this feeling in my legs and the pains which shoot through my arms to my hands.

I am hoping that some one can help me through suggestions of what they have done. Looking over this discussion board, it sounds like there are a few whom have dealt with this problem for a while. I am hoping to gain from their experiance.
Have You Dealt with sort of thing before?

[NastyHashi]

Hello and welcome to the boards. Do you recall what your numbers were like before you started meds? TSH? Free T4?

Did you have leg pain BEFORE you started meds or only after?

I ask because what you describe seems to be muscle weakness, not leg pain and weakness is usually associated with too much meds and/or hyper.

I have Graves and Hashi's and I tend to go from hyper to hypo back and forth and when I am on the hyper side, I get that "post workout" feeling in my legs. When I am on the hypo side, its more of a joint pain / old man feeling than a cramping type of feeling.

I don't want to get you crazy so new into your diagnosis but a lot of docs miss the starting dose by a long shot - either too little hormone or too much hormone....another reason I asked about your pre-meds numbers.

Lastly, and trust me on this, it is good to be dilligient and knowledgable, but do not make yourself crazy by writing every little twitch and ache down....really, you will only make yourself nuts and with the thyroid problem, you will end up "finding things" that are probably not even attributed to your thyroid. Try to keep it as simple as possible. Relieving stress is the best remedy in my opinion for any thyroid disease.

Lastly, trust your body. If your body is telling you you are still not on track, go give blood. Get tested. Docs don't test frequently enough in my opinion.

Goog luck to you.

[Emily]

Thank you so much for your response!

I had leg pain originally (along with hair falling out, shooting pains through arms, heart palipations, sleeping problems, diagnosed with carpel tunnel, hands/arms falling "asleep") which prompted me to go to the doctor for testing. Symptoms came on slowly and individually over the period of a couple of months. They found that I had Hashimoto (rheumatologist).

My numbers in

October (rheumatologist)=remarkebly elevated TSH 275 micro international units/ML
Dec. 11-2007 TSH was .15 Free T4 =1.74
January 17, 2008 TSH was 2.67

Since then, I have been reading a book by Mary Shomon about it and have gone to an endocindrologist (which did not really tell me anything other than maybe I should go to a neuralogist and a physicologist)