Chronic Rants

The thing about thyroid hormones is that they are needed for every part of the body to function. When you look at the list of hundreds of hypothyroid symptoms, you can see exactly what I mean. We need thyroid hormones.

It took too long for my hypothyroidism to be diagnosed. I am certain that the years-long delay in diagnosis and treatment led to some of the long-term damage to my body. Eventually I was diagnosed and put on medication.

Nine years later I did my own research and realized a lot of my ongoing health issues were untreated thyroid symptoms. I switched to a different class of medications altogether called Natural Dessicated Thyroid (NDT.) Instead of synthetic, human-made hormones, I was no taking pills formed from pig thyroid. You see, pigs produce the same thyroid hormones as humans, and in similar proportions. Many hypothyroid patients see huge improvement on these medications. Eventually I even got my father to switch to NDT and he also found improvement.

Things went well until several months ago. After years on Nature-throid I was suddenly hypothyroid again. What the hell?! I read on a hypothyroid blog that a lot of Nature-throid patients had seen a resurgence of symptoms since they changed their manufacturing process last year. At the time they swore they weren’t making any changes other than switching to a bigger facility. We’re now learning that there were changes to the ingredients after all, and that these were having unintended consequences for many patients.

I spoke to my doctor, who gladly wrote me a prescription for another NDT called NP Thyroid. But when I called the company that makes NP Thyroid I learned that it contains cornstarch. I react badly to corn. This would be a tiny amount but even so, I would eventually have issues with it. So we turned to compound medications.

The compound pharmacy is horrible. I won’t detail the issues now, but they suck at filling a prescription. I should have had this prescription last week but they keep having delays. My old Nature-throid prescription may not work well but it’s better than nothing so I figured I better get a refill, since the new compound wouldn’t be ready before I ran out of medication.

And then I got the call: Nature-throid is back-ordered until March. They don’t know why. No one has it. I asked around and learned more. The raw ingredients are back-ordered so it’s not just Nature-throid but all NDT medications! I even called a different compounding pharmacy and they said they can’t get their hands on it either.

SHIT!!!

So now I’m panicking, because I need my thyroid medication! And remember how I said thyroid hormones effect all parts of the body? Well, they affect mood, too. I have been more emotional lately due to being in a hypothyroid state. So while the issues with the compounding pharmacy are rightly upsetting me, I am getting even more upset than I usually would. I don’t have the capacity to properly react to things right now. This means I’m extra stressed out.

And ironically, the thing that is currently causing me the most stress is my inability to get my hands on the medication that would fix the problem that is causing me to be so emotional.

There aren’t a lot of options here, and things could get very bad. If I can’t get more NDT (I’m cleaning out every pharmacy that I can right now) then I will have to go back to synthetic medications. But those probably contain corn in the fillers and might not even be gluten-free. Not to mention, they simply don’t work as well as NDT. There’s a good reason I stopped taking them. But my thyroid can’t produce enough hormones on its own, so what choice do I have?

For any of you who take NDT, stock up now! Get extra refills if you can. Because the next few months could be rough for anyone with hypothyroid who takes these necessary, life-saving medications. And if you know anything about why this back-order is happening, please comment below or email me at msrants at gmail dot come because I would love to know.

Good luck to all of us. Let’s hope they bring our medication back soon. Because our lives depend on it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2019 at 11:51 am and is filed under Frustration, Healthcare, Medication, Rants, Symptoms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.