I was hopeful (perhaps overly so) that this doctor would have the answers that still eluded me, and was hopeful that he would continue to prescribe the Armour Thyroid that I thought was the best medication for me. After a long, and somewhat disappointing, conversation he asked me to try a medication that I have been extremely resistant to trying. And then he asked me if I had any basis for resisting it, other than the fact that it's a synthetic hormone rather than a naturally-derived hormone.
I'll be honest, that question made me think.
Sometimes I get so caught up in feeling like I'm right, I close my eyes to being open to other potential solutions. And I didn't have a good answer for him other than that I had heard from many people that the medication he wants me to try didn't work for them. It was a legitimate question--how could I know it WOULDN'T work if I wouldn't even give it a try?
The answer is, I don't know that it won't work. I don't have any personal experience to back up my opinion, only the prejudice that I've developed based on other people's experiences. Of course, that doesn't mean that this new medication WILL work, it just means that I really shouldn't insist that it won't without having the experience to back it up.
So I've agreed to try an 8 week trial of Synthroid. There is a part of me that feels like I may have compromised a little on my stance to try using only natural thyroid hormone, but there is a bigger part of me that feels like I can't honestly justify stating that natural thyroid hormone is the only medication that works when I haven't given other medications a try.
In eight weeks, I will be able to say definitively if I feel any different with the new medication. At the very least, I can't imagine feeling worse than I do now, so theoretically I can't get any worse. Hopefully, I'll turn out to be one of the people that do really well on this medication. But if not, then I will have a good reason to justify my request for the other medication. It could just be semantics, but I'm going to focus on being flexible and not worry so much about feeling like I compromised on my health care.
