Reply to Can anyone tell me about your treatment for hyperthryoid/Graves disease?

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[quote=Anonymous]There are three treatments - surgery (very rarely done), medication, and radioactive iodine treatment. It sounds like your mom had RAI, which destroys your thyroid so you need to take thyroid hormone for the rest of your life.

I've had Graves for several years, but most of that time it has been in remission (normal labs, no symptoms). I never had a seriously hyperactive thyroid. It was always subclinical - low or no TSH, normal thyroid hormone levels. What that means is that the pituitary is compensating for excess thyroid hormone in the blood by releasing less TSH (TSH is what stimulates the thyroid to make thyroid hormone). Graves is an autoimmune disease and getting tests for antibodies can be helpful in terms of seeing how strong of an autoimmune response is going on.

I've read a lot about Graves and learned that in the US RAI is the preferred treatment, while in most of the rest of the world medication is the preferred treatment. The first endo I went to wanted to do RAI on me. I got a second opinion and the second endo recommended monitoring. I am glad he did because in a matter of months my Graves went into remission on its own. A couple of years later after a stressful period in my life (death of a parent) it returned and I took meds. The meds put me back into remission pretty quickly. I stayed on the meds for less than a year and stopped when I got pregnant. Since then all has been normal for the past few years. I still go to the endo every six months for monitoring. In fact I am due to go soon and your post reminded me that I need to get my labs done! HTH[/quote]

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