cassiecass,
I've never been told I could take my thyroid medication at night so I am going to ask about doing that. I finally asked my Internist to refer me to an endocrinologist a few months ago. As I posted before, I had a problem after my surgeries 4.5 years ago. I'm having it again. My doctor has been retesting me every six weeks and increasing the strength each time. It took me a long time to get an endocrinologist's appt. I'm glad I brought my current prescription bottle with me. The doctor insisted I was on .150 as that was what the records she'd received from my internist said. I pulled out the bottle. I knew what I was taking and she was ticking me off. She stared at the bottle, looked at my paperwork and shook her head. The reason it took me so long to get into see her is because she wanted me to be on the .150 dose for 3 months before new testing. This did not get communicated to my doctor or or nurse, if communicated at all. So we had a failure to communicate. Now her attitude was better. Sorry for dragging this along. Hopefully you might benefit from this story.
She said getting tested every 6 weeks is too soon. She now feared I was on too strong of a dose. She wrote a lab order for the last 2 weeks in July. I think I should have gone to her sooner. I have taken every strength of Levothyroxine from .77 ( or 88?) to .175 over the last 4.5 years.
When I was at Mayo's in Feb. the rest results were 19.8 with the normal range being .3 - 4.2. I was tested there May of 2012 at .03. Both results are bad and my GI is the one that stresses the importance of having it under control. I emailed my doctor from Mayo's, in Rochester, and asked where she wanted me to get it retested. Her nurse called and said that she, the internist, wanted to see me in her office the next day. She said if the ready was really 19.8 I would be in the hospital. The next test came back at almost 12. She was testing me every 6 weeks and increasing the dose from 112 to the latest 175.
My last 2 PCPs prior to my current one, tested at 6-8 weeks as well.
Because the new doctor instructed me to take the pill at the same time each day and not eat or take other medications for 2 hours I'm setting my alarm in order to take the tiny pill at the same time daily. My current PCP had instructed me to wait 1 hour and the prior ones didn't tell me anything - but it rarely changed.
I bought an alarm pill box. It holds 7 days with 4 different partitions per day. I've been using the same storage solution for years but ran across this alarmed version at Walgreens. It isn't working. I am sleeping through the alarms. So I am now setting my cell phone on the most obnoxious ring tone - "Rooster".
I'm going to be back at Mayo's the end of July for another pouchoscopy and am taking her lab order with me. My j-pouch has almost become a full-time job. I need a vacation from my body or a new body.