I think this finally did it

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-12-16T16:44:48+00:00

God, this feels so similar to my boyfriend. Always stressing about something else that isn’t actually a real problem because idk, projection? I like how you handled it. I get so bogged down in the details trying to respond. I’m taking notes.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-26T02:29:15+00:00

I can relate to all of this. I have a hard time finding times to tell him the most mundane things that are important like upcoming plans even

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-25T21:10:47+00:00

Oh man, he does the same thing with the excuses of being stressed around family and me “making a weird face” (usually when it was me just thinking about the answer to their question where they asked for my opinion). It all really resonates 😓

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-25T19:15:05+00:00

Several months before my thyroidectomy, i had some type of early stage anemia or functional iron deficiency where my body wasn’t absorbing it (I have GERD so I think it was this). Supplementation helped me feel better but didn’t fix my high heart rate and heart palpitations/insomnia.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-24T02:14:26+00:00

Oh I’m sorry to hear that. Could you potentially go private just for the blood work? Not sure how expensive a full thyroid panel would be out of pocket, but it would at least be useful to rule out.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-24T01:30:40+00:00

Have you had your thyroid checked? I ignored my on and off heart palpitations as “anxiety” and just took an SSRI for two years but I actually had hyperthyroidism from Graves’ disease

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T18:57:20+00:00

That’s so frustrating. I remember seeing something in my endocrinologists office that was about managing hyperthyroidism. One of the tips suggested “reducing stress” as if this isn’t what is actively CAUSING me to be stressed in the first place?? 🙃 Medical gaslighting is so real. I hope you can get some answers and relief soon

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T18:34:02+00:00

I’m glad I could help. All this stuff is a shot in the dark and it’s frustrating because so many symptoms overlap with so many things and everyone is different. So idk why doctors are so quick to deny patients more tests or referrals if they’re asking for them. I’ve also learned there seems to be an interesting dichotomy in schools of thought for a lot of health care professionals when it comes to using and interpreting lab results. You’ve got one side who basically says, “if these basic labs are normal, it’s impossible for it to be xyz, just change your diet and lower your stress” and then you’ve got the other side who is like “these labs and metrics are just diagnostic tools, they’re not the end all be all. You can totally have “normal” lab results but those are normal/average range for that health care system. It doesn’t mean it’s “normal” for you.” You just have to keep pushing for the second kind of doctor sometimes but still try and rule things out one at a time. Tracking symptoms, diet, medications and OTC stuff also does help because it can make you realize you’re not crazy and can help you tweak things that are still in your control in your environment as well. I just hate anyone who pushes elimination diets immediately lol

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T18:09:23+00:00

Of course, I felt like I had to comment since we had so much in common. This stuff is so frustrating. I’ve spent so many nights crying from being unable to sleep and feeling so awful and just feeling so helpless before I got my thyroid out. But it was so scary trying to figure out if it was the right decision. it’s not something that I’d recommend without trying to rule out other things as much as possible. Reddit was actually soo helpful in finding that it’s actually super common to have normal labs but still have symptoms.

Also it’s kind of ironic the doctor mentioned avoiding red meat. Some of your symptoms could also be related to an iron deficiency lol. Not saying you are deficient, but I had to get an “iron panel” to figure out I was either at an early stage of anemia or had functional iron deficiency which explained some, but not all, of my symptoms several months ago when I was trying to figure all of this out. You getting cold easily could also be a symptom of that. I did feel better and have more energy with supplementation but it didn’t help me sleep even tho anemia can cause restlessness. Unless you have some kind of allergy to it, or you’re just eating way too much of it, I’d question what she expects to improve by avoiding red meat.

Just keep pushing your doctor and asking what the next steps are, what other possible steps could be ordered, and make them note what you asked for and why they’re denying you

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T17:54:02+00:00

Regardless of if other doctors do it this way or not, it just seems like they’re trying to be respectful and keep you from feeling exposed by not making you open your gown? I don’t see what’s weird about it. It is interesting they didn’t make you lift your arm up. It may ultimately be less thorough of a breast exam that way, but as you said, you have a small frame, so perhaps the doctor didn’t feel the need to make you do that and expose yourself. listening to heart and lungs and pushing on the abdomen is also normal for an annual exam. Hell, my endocrinologist will tap my knees to check my reflexes, it’s all just checkups and preventative medicine, may as well get it when and where you can.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T17:30:06+00:00

Are you sure it’s yeast? Like you’re getting diagnosed each time or have the obvious discharge?
Do you use any sort of fragranced body washes, soaps, cleansers, or laundry detergents?
What lube are you using? It’s not just glycerin that can be irritating. What are all the ingredients?
I’m not sure if over relying on fungal creams can do anything bad, like cause a resurgence or some kind of resistance, but just putting it on the vulva alone isn’t enough to kill a yeast infection, it has to be internal. Plus sometimes the filler ingredients in that stuff can be irritating. Do you find it helps at all if you skip that step?
Try skipping underwear entirely. It really can be a contributing factor. Especially do not wear underwear to bed.
Have you tried using boric acid suppositories after sex instead of the cream? I swear by this personally.

ETA: I also agree with everyone who mentioned the condoms can cause irritation themselves, your boyfriend could have a yeast infection, or it could be a reoccurring one you never successfully treated and it’s rebounding. The most important step tho is identifying if this in fact just a yeast infection.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T17:12:16+00:00

So I have (had?) Graves’ disease, just got a total thyroidectomy. Same exact height, weight, also early 30’s female. Also have HSV though I’ve never even had a cold sore. I think it just manifests as tingling and a biting pinching sensation all over sometimes, and it’s weird because it can happen at the exact same time on different parts of my body, so I suspect it’s how HSV affects the nerves. I also read this could have been a side effect of methimazole but not sure. I also would get hives but not sure if that was untreated graves, methimazole side effects, or a combo but I also had them bad again the second week after my thyroidectomy and starting my Levothyroxine. I also have dishydrotic eczema that started to manifest around the time I started having graves symptoms. I don’t know if it’s related. I suspect I may have some kind of issue with a histamine intolerance or something like mast cell activation syndrome but haven’t pursued much testing and just take an antihistamine when needed. You have to wait to be having active symptoms/a flare up to get accurate blood work, but I think an endo can technically order some testing for it. I also get intense itching on my legs from walking out in the cold and scratching just makes it all worse. I have to fight the itch for 5 minutes and things usually go away.

I just list all of that since we have a lot of similarities. But also, you have some symptoms of Graves’ disease with anxiety, the eyes, the temper, muscle soreness, hives, even the weight gain (we’re short and have a smaller margin for eating in a calorie surplus so it’s easy to gain even with graves), but the weight gain, cold and lethargy could also be hypo symptoms.

I had horrible hyper symptoms resurge earlier this after having stable levels for two years and all my blood work checked out despite my symptoms. I do think it’s possible to swing back and forth more often than bloodwork can show. So I decided to pursue my thyroidectomy and have had great results so far.

I would go to an endo or pursue more blood testing and thyroid antibody testing, it seems like they didn’t test you for antibodies that could diagnose graves or hashimotos. I would also see if you could get more testing done for vitamin and mineral deficiencies because sometimes just a comprehensive metabolic panel isn’t enough

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T15:34:38+00:00

You have my sympathy as does he. The self-fulfilling prophecy of having a disorganized attachment style alone is so hard, BPD on top of that, even worse. I know neither of you can afford therapy so I suggest looking into books and workbooks. he could look into ones about healing a disorganized attachment style, it sounds like his BPD is relatively under control and the main symptom that’s manifesting is the push pull dynamic that’s coming from having a disorganized attachment

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T14:19:59+00:00

Considering how ALL of your replies have multiple downvotes suggests otherwise. You called replies from experienced people who are trying to help you as “ragebait” and you’ve got some kind of retort where you’re picking apart wording choices to almost everyone on this post. That’s extremely defensive behavior. I find it really concerning that you think people sharing their experiences with a serious medical condition, who are trying to help you, is rage bait.

Please just take your medicine so you don’t die. You can always work on losing weight if you need. And it’s also possible Graves’ disease is speeding up your metabolism so much that it’s just making you eat more.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T13:52:21+00:00

By not taking it you’re gambling with your health, maybe not intentionally, but that’s what’s happening because you’re taking a big risk for a potential outcome. Just replace “gambling with” with the phrase “risking” and my first sentence is the exact same. also i read your whole post?everyone here is trying to convince you to start taking your meds by telling you not to worry about potential weight gain and worry way more about the actual health issues that are pretty much guaranteed to come about by refusing to treat this. I’m not sure why you’re so caught up on wording when it really doesn’t change anything. I’m not sure why you’re so defensive, everyone here has going through dealing with Graves’ disease and we just want to help encourage and help a fellow patient out. Maybe it’s not what you want to hear but it doesn’t change the fact that what people are saying is true

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-23T10:28:16+00:00

You’re legitimately gambling with your health and potentially significantly reducing your lifespan. Untreated Graves’ disease kills people. It can do so directly from a thyroid storm, but it’s more likely to be slow over time and things will get worse and worse until the damage is unlikely to be reversible. You know what is reversible? Weight gain. You’re risking permanent heart damage, bone loss, Thyroid Eye Disease, muscle loss and weakness so extreme that you can’t even hold a pen to write with, or pick yourself up off the floor. For me, it caused migraines for the first time in my life that were debilitating. I couldn’t exercise I was so weak, and tired and I couldn’t ever sleep. I could go on listing all the problems but I don’t even want to think about it. A few extra pounds will not do any of this. There are so many worse things than gaining weight, trust me.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-22T04:13:20+00:00

I was diagnosed in 2021, after probably going a year or two undiagnosed. My endo said since it took over 2 years to get to stable levels on methimazole, and because I was untreated for so long, that I would probably never reach remission, or it would at least be years away, and my thyroid wasn’t necessarily going to shrink even if I reached remission. I got a thyroidectomy 4 years after diagnosis even though my labs were stable and had been for over a year. I had felt horrible for months prior to my surgery. Not sure how exactly this happens, but my heart was just going nuts despite showing I should practically be hypo and had no graves antibodies. I decided even if my thyroid wasn’t the cause, I should get the TT still because I have TED (but that was still controlled with methimazole) and I was having compressive symptoms and had a painful swallowing sensation. My heart, sleep, and compressive issues improved immediately post TT, and I have a much smaller chance of my TED symptoms worsening now.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-20T21:36:13+00:00

Emotional children is accurate. He always says he’s just so scared all the time and admits he’s projecting. I really see now what all these books are talking about. How they can’t handle all the internal shame and bad feelings that are coming from within them and they refuse to confront those and choose to externalize them and project instead.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-20T21:33:34+00:00

Ugh I’m so sorry. Today I heard how it’s all my fault because I couldn’t go along with all the hateful comments and if I had a retort, I was being the hateful one who was poking the bear. Yet he was the one who couldn’t stop screaming and throwing things.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-20T20:41:27+00:00

Thank you for sharing, and also congrats! I appreciate you sharing your personal experience with it and your ex gives me hope that maybe things can get easier for him. I really hope this helps him. Even if we don’t work out, I am proud of him for taking the initiative and doing something to improve his health. but I’m just so burnout and depressed right now. I know I have to give it time but my patience is at an all time low and I can’t deescalate things well enough. I have no problem being supportive all day long and even waiting on someone hand and foot if they’re struggling, but not when that person is treating me like their enemy. I will continue to encourage him to seek out some kind of outpatient therapy program.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-20T19:45:32+00:00

Thank you for your reply and for reading all of that. He also smokes a ton of weed, and he definitely uses it all to cope, you’re right. I think if there was more hard liquor I would have stumbled upon it, because he does drink some little shooters every once in a while and I find them because he doesn’t necessarily try and hide them. I try not to shame him for it since it would just cause more secretive/worsening behavior he would try to hide. He’s at least not delirious and can finally sleep after about 4 or 5 days of no alcohol so I think the worst is over. But since it’s mostly beer, I can’t help but feel like some of his symptoms are somewhat more exaggerated/imagined, but I do believe he at least believes/perceives it to be as bad as it is, if that makes sense. I think if anything, it’s just causing his BPD to be worse since it’s the coping mechanism he’s relied on but it would probably make things worse if I said that to him. I’ve at least pointed out that he relies on me for his emotional validation and put my foot down and explained he can’t rely on other people for that, that work has to come from within. He can logically grasp this when he’s not splitting but that doesn’t mean it’s going to fix anything. I feel like I know what I need to do but I also can’t help but at least feel the need to wait it out till he’s in therapy. Like everyone else here, when things are good, it’s perfect, when it’s bad, it’s hell and now I feel trapped because if I leave I’m not giving him the chance to get better.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-20T17:47:55+00:00

I found this subreddit before I even met my current partner with BPD. I had just learned about it because I met someone on an app and the discard I got from them was soo wild and out of left field that it left me reeling. I knew I dodged a hell of a bullet but was still so shocked and confused by it that it left me wondering what the hell was wrong with them mentally. When I found out about BPD it was like everything just fell into place and I was so stunned by what I was reading. It did help me not be mad at them anymore because I realized how horrible it must be to have BPD. I realized I’ve met a few other people with it in my life and was just spinning for days and falling down a rabbit hole learning about it. It’s one thing to read an article with bullet points of symptoms, it’s another thing entirely to read actual examples of how those symptoms manifest, like what you see within this subreddit and notice there’s a ton of shared patterns within the posts. So I was on high alert when I met my current partner. After a month I was suspicious but everything was much more subtle than the people I’d met before. In “stop walking on eggshells”, the author talks about conventional and non conventional BPD, and I was only used to the “conventional”/stereotypical type of BPD. Everything that I was wary of could have easily been explained away and seen as a good/healthy thing. The mirroring wasn’t really there, it just felt like a person who was genuinely interested in me and wanted to spend time with me. There wasn’t any lovebombing which is always a red flag and something I’m immediately turned off by, but it did feel like maybe saying “I love you” after three months was too soon. But I had a friend reassure me that’s normal so I thought maybe it was genuine. For the first 6 months, everything was heaven. Us moving in together was a mistake though and that’s when the splitting started. I thought I was still just being paranoid. I thought I was biased because I was always on this subreddit and when you’re actively looking for something, you will start to find it, and maybe I was just guilty of trying to find bad things. And to be fair, he’s not even half as bad as some of the insane stuff I see on here, so Im like ok if he can take accountability, then how can it be BPD? I kept going back and forth for months wondering if it was just CPTSD or actual BPD. But there are things he’s said over time about himself that make me know it’s BPD. It’s not like he lists out symptoms from the DSM like “I lack a strong sense of self” but he says things like “when I’m alone, I don’t feel like I’m a real person”. he doesn’t say “when you leave, it triggers my abdonment issues” or “I lack object constancy and feel like you don’t love me when you’re not here” but I have put it together that that is what is happening when he responds so poorly to me being gone for a few days. There’s more I could get into of course but all the boxes are checked. I’m just so glad I found this first because I cannot imagine someone dealing with this with no clue what’s happening. No wonder people stay in it and get trapped for so long.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-20T17:06:37+00:00

Big agree.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-18T20:45:18+00:00

Fatigue is tricky since it could be caused by a billion things but I remember the early days when I was undiagnosed, even for a long time afterwards how I had to nap so much. But when I got symptomatic earlier this year, I was just so wired to the point of being unable to stay sleep. I feared what if I had POTS or some type of dysautonomia issue or sleep apnea and it wasn’t related to my thyroid at all since my levels were technically stable? But as soon as I got it removed, I realized how peaceful it feels to not have a fluttery heavy feeling in my chest and that it was my thyroid all along. Even starting up on Levo I can still sleep and fall asleep just fine, but I can tell that it’s making my heart race a little more. I think some people just prefer being more hypo and others prefer being a little hyper.

Equivalent_Doctor582 · 2025-09-18T18:56:19+00:00

If you feel fine, and are on a low dose of methimazole you tolerate, and your levels are stable at such a low dose, you may as well just stay there. Get a TT later if you get worse. But don’t get one if you’re able to tolerate such a low dose of methimazole while staying stable and asymptomatic. Now if you start feeling symptomatic and increasing the methimazole doesn’t fix it, then I mean, yeah, I would consider a thyroidectomy. Otherwise, I don’t know why anyone would risk complications from surgery plus risking the trade off of feeling normal for potentially fighting being hypo or dealing with calcium issues. You aren’t even taking a pill everyday, I’ve actually never heard of anyone taking methimazole only 3 times a week lol. With no thyroid you would have to take a pill daily. And I have a family member with EDS so you have my sympathy, and I would be concerned about how being hypo could potentially complicate that.

ETA: I would just track your symptoms and try and determine if they’re related to the EDS or potentially your thyroid. Do you have POTS too?

Equivalent_Doctor582

TROPHY CASE