I haven't been here in a million years, but I HAD to come back and share this with you.

I took lithium for a couple years about 5 years ago. It ended up being a bad medication for me, it wasn't helping me, what it ALSO did was cause me to develop a goiter and require thyroid medication.

My knowledge here is fuzzy, I need to apologize but I know most of you guys are very knowledgeable about what blood tests they run, this is my story of what I had to go through to get them to run a complete thyroid panel on me, I know there is a preliminary thyroid blood test they run, and then IF it comes back abnormal they CAN run further blood tests, a whole panel, on different thyroid hormones, but they NEVER ran any but that preliminary test on me, AND it never came back abnormal, they put me on thyroid meds ONLY while I was on lithium and ONLY based on the presence of the goiter.

Fast forward to now. My fiancé dies a couple years back, and it was hard to go through that without eating my feelings, so I gained some of my weight back...and the gained more...and more...faster...and faster, regardless of how I ate, and there were times I would go back to induction for a month or more at a time and never lose an ounce of fat OR WATER, and instead GAIN.

In February I begin to seek treatment for this, because my psychiatrist expressed frustration to me that he could not treat my mood because he believed it was being affected too greatly by whatever was physically wrong with me, be it hormonal or thyroid or metabolic. I go to a primary care doc that he sets me up with, she runs tests and sends me to an endocrinologist that must have been 23 years old who runs the SAME EXACT TESTS and sets me up for a follow up in 3 MONTHS.

I'm pissed at this point and I call the first doctor and ask her what is up, she tells me they "can't find anything wrong" (they weren't LOOKING) and I ask her to run the REST of the thyroid tests in the panel, because all she did was rerun the preliminary one, the same one that has never in the last 5 years come back abnormal, in spite of a goiter that is large enough now to affect my VOICE. She refuses.

I am completely abandoned medically. Not only can I not get diagnosis and treatment of what is wrong with me physically, but I can't even continue treatment for my bipolar disorder, because my doctor cant tell how it is affecting me because the physical concerns have become worse than the bipolar disorder. I get really angry, I stop seeing all my docs, I stop taking all my meds, I just feel really betrayed and helpless and angry.

A month ago I finally have calmed down enough to see my psych and express to him my anger about all of this in a calmer manner, like I was that upset I couldn't go near a doctor. I explain to him what thyroid tests I wanted done, and that I wasn't SURE it was my thyroid, I just didn't have a diagnostician willing to take me seriously and help me figure out what was wrong. He goes to this other doctor and HE asks them to run the thyroid tests.

LO AND BEHOLD...do I need to tell you the rest? They found something on one of these tests. Not the preliminary one, the most common one they run, they ALSO did that one at the same time and it comes back PERFECTLY NORMAL.

I don't know what they DID find, I won't hear from the doc until Monday. I just had to share what a complete mess the VA healthcare system is and the hell they've put me through with my thyroid for the last 5 years +.