Janet’s story

Janet, with peri-menopause symp­toms and con­ti­nuing hypothy­roid on T4 meds, took the bull by the horns and found a doc­tor who lis­te­ned. She is now on Armour and doing wonderful.

I was having full-blown symp­toms of peri­me­no­pause — hot flashes, “foggy” thin­king, spo­ra­tic mens­trual cyc­les, inex­pli­ca­ble weight gain (to the tune of 10 lbs in one month at times).

Back in my more active days, I used to weigh somewhere in the vici­nity of 138 – 140 lbs; which was great for me. And I felt okay back then. I was diag­no­sed with Hashimoto’s when I was 22 and took either Synth­roid or Levoxyl for the next 20 years.

I star­ted having all these weird symp­toms around the time I tur­ned 38 (I’ll be 43 this Satur­day). From the time I was 38 to the time I was 42, my weight went from 155 lbs to 203 lbs after losing 2 preg­nan­cies. And no mat­ter what exer­cise I did or what I ate, I simply could NOT get that weight off — I only went higher. I FELT horri­ble all the time — I just KNEW something was wrong with me. But, I couldn’t pin­point it.

At the time, I was under the care of an endoc­ri­no­lo­gist (thin­king that was the best I could do for my thy­roid main­te­nance). As a mat­ter of fact, this guy was even a spe­cia­list in meta­bo­lism, as well. But, every time I approached the sub­ject of my bouts of weight gain, he told me to “get wal­king and stop eating” — as if I hadn’t already done that. It really made me mad. And with all my peri­me­no­pause symp­toms, he still igno­red my pleas for help.

I was tired and LOOKED tired all the time. My hair was falling out so quickly that I swear I should have held stock in Liquid Plum’r. I was GROUCHY and my PMS symp­toms las­ted at least 3 out of 4 weeks of the month.

The only time I DIDN’T have these issues was when I was preg­nant with my 2^nd baby. …That’s what clued me in — my hor­mo­nes were more in balance while I was preg­nant. It WAS hor­mo­nes — just as I sus­pec­ted. So, I star­ted searching the inter­net for ans­wers. That’s when I found STTM — and it really chan­ged my out­look as well as my life.

In an effort to get star­ted on the “right” medi­ca­tion ASAP, I called my endoc­ri­no­lo­gist and asked to be taken OFF Levoxyl and put on Armour. His res­ponse was, “I can change you to Armour, but it’s not going to make any dif­fe­rence. Your levels are fine.” The second that came out of his mouth, I knew I had to find a dif­fe­rent doc­tor — one who would sup­port my deci­sion to change and inc­rease my dosage to a point where I FELT bet­ter finally.

I found my doc­tor on the Top Thy­roid Docs web­site and made an appoint­ment right away. He tal­ked to me about my con­cerns (and he LISTENED TO ME). He said that 1/2 of his diag­no­sis would have to take into account how I feel — not just some num­bers on a piece of paper from a lab. It was then that I knew I was in the right place. I went from taking 90mg to 240mg over the past year (which is where I am now). I actually feel youn­ger now than I did when I was 38.

Oh, and I for­got to men­tion — libido. I had abso­lu­tely NO libido bet­ween the ages of 38 and 42! NONE! Thank­fully, it’s back and my unbe­lie­vably patient and unders­tan­ding hus­band is much hap­pier.