Scenario: Very healthy 59 year old woman. RARELY needing to see doctor. No chronic health problems and regular exerciser.
One tiny pill, each day for the last (almost) 40 years - thyroid.
For reasons I won't go into, last January I decided to quit taking that one tiny pill.
Thursday May 5 - home alone, experiencing 'heart related symptoms': dizziness, ringing in ears, shortness of breath, tingling in hands, pain in upper left back and just a feeling of being 'off'. Drove self to ER.
Admitted to ER with blood pressure of 244/140 (yes, you read that correctly and I was still standing!) Immediate coronary workup, and excellent care from the ER staff at Hill Country Memorial Hospital. After blood work the first discovery was a blood reading that showed a level that is normally 20-100 - mine was 2000. This had to do with kidney function. Of course, as I sat in the ER room, with a fluid drip and various machines monitoring my BP, oxygen and more I 'googled' the high level and read things like "brain cancer, heart damage, kidney failure" and more. A few tense hours of wondering which horrible disease it was going to be. About 6 hrs after arriving at the ER I was admitted and they continued with the fluids and monitoring my BP. It had come down - but was still in dangerous high levels. Soon after I was settled in a room the attending Dr. arrived to give me the news: "well, you told us that you had quit taking your thyroid back in January. Your thyroid levels are scary low - and ALL of your symptoms can be attributed to that. You are showing no signs of stroke, brain problems or kidney failure, though your kidneys were in danger of permanent damage if we hadn't found this now".
They started me on IV thyroid - but even with that levels of thyroid don't rise very quickly, just like they don't leave our system quickly. My symptoms had been building slowly since January and since I have taken it so long (like I said, 40 years!) it just took awhile to all come to this place. I was pumped with fluids via IV for nearly 20 hours. Several doses of the IV thyroid and then released to go home. But here is the deal: my blood pressure is staying elevated and will until my thyroid levels get back to a normal range. So now I also take another 'little pill' for BP. Hopefully this will be short term and when my thyroid levels get back to normal my BP will also go back to the normal low that I have always had. The renal readings will also take awhile to get back to normal.
Scenario: 'healthy" 59 year old woman, now needing to monitor BP daily, taking meds, tried to go for my walk today and could manage about 10 minutes, not feeling quite so healthy at the moment. Now facing regular doctor appts until my system is back to normal.
One tiny pill.........
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