Hi:
My wife was diagnosed with Graves disease. She is 30. Her heart was always racing around 120 and it made her extremely anxious and tired. After seeing an endocrinologist she was given a choice, either destroy Thyroid through irradiation and then take thyroid hormone pills for life or take Tapazole for 1 year which has the chance of bringing the thyroid back to normal and then being drug free indefinitely. We chose the latter to not go through thyroid destruction. She started taking Tapazole about
a year ago. It appeared to work while she was on it and I believe her antibodies were coming back to normal. Since about
a few months ago, she was slowly reducing the dose of Tapazole and now off it entirely. Heartbeat seems ok still, waiting for antibody tests, but she does feel (albeit very slowly) that some symptoms may be creeping back. So she may start to take Tapazole again soon.
One of the questions I have is about
getting pregnant on Tapazole - the doctor said it's not a good idea. Is this the general consensus on this topic?
The other possibility is that she will finally get the thyroid irradiation done and then just take hormone pills. The doctor said you have to wait 1 year after having this procedure done to get pregnant, after which if you do get pregnant, the hormone pills you are taking can be more easily adjusted than Tapazole could.
So I guess my second question is, should she go ahead and have the thyroid irradiation done? How is life afterwards? What can she expect if she gets it done?
Thanks,
B
Post Edited (brucen36) : 12/3/2015 6:31:52 PM (GMT-7)