This was my mother 2 weeks ago. She had not been to the doctor since 1993 and was afraid to go. She got very thin, losing hair, weak, unsteady and started to lose continence. She was hospitalized for 5 days and is now in rehab, hoping she will feel better enough to go home and not have to have care in a facility for the rest of her life.

Regular check-ups would really have helped her--too bad she was so stubborn.

Now she is taking levothyroxin (sp?). Has anyone else heard of a case like this?

Well, not that high no but often times your TSH doesn't correspond to how lousy you feel. Like someone with a TSH of 50 doesn't necessarily feel 10x worse than someone with a TSH of 5.

If you don't have enough thyroid hormone eventually you will go into myxedema coma and die eventually.

How old is your Mom? There's something called euthyroid disease too that happens in the elderly.

She is almost 82. She hasn't seen the endo yet, and I guess they will draw more blood in about a month to check dosage.

yes...actually my tsh was 485 when first diagnosed....
problem is i didn't lose wt packed on over 70 lbs the couple of yrs before diagnosis

Wow, that's high! My mom is doing much better and is about to go home from assisted living. Hopefully she will have enough physical strength to stay at home alone.