Rapid weight gain: thyroid?

[Hopetogether]

Hello all

I have booked a doctors appointment but also would like some mumsnet support & advice.

I am 25, petite 5ft2 female. Actappyive and healthy but in the previous two weeks I have ballooned!!! I have gained 8llbs, cannot do my clothes up and cannot remove my rings.

Health wise: I eat a healthy varied diet, 3 meals a day plus fruit or nuts as snacks. I am training for a 10k and run 5 times a week. I am a nanny and walk up to 5 miles a day around London: I am a,ways on my feet. I drink no coffee, eat chocolate maybe once a fortnight and have the odd yummy snack. I do squats, sit-ups and basically follow a non stop active lifestyle.

My symptons other than the weight gain include depression, awful ongoing constipation, fatigue (I fall asleep at 8.30pm sleep all night and am still tired), my responses have become slower: I'm an intelligent person but cannot often give a direct response and my concentrstion has become bad. My partner has also noticed my hearing rapidly decline... I miss hear what people are saying all the time and people are noticing. My thick long hair has begun to snap and my nails are brittle whereas before long & strong. I am terribly achy but put that down to a hectic lifestyle and increase in running.

I'm starting to worry and have googled my symptoms. Under active thyroid seems one but previously doctors have shrugged this suggestion off. They won't help ME with my bowel issues and simply say I have IBS. The final thing is I've totally lost my sex drive, whereas before I really loved it. I. Suffering and so is my lovely partner.

Help I'm very very unhappy and just don't feel myself.

Many thanks.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Some doctors are simply not up to speed when it comes to potential thyroid problems. I would see a different GP to any others you have seen previously.

This link from Thyroid UK may be helpful to you and I would look at their website anyway:-

www.thyroiduk.org.uk/tuk/diagnosis/getting_diagnosis.html

Good luck, you will need to be persistent in order to get answers.

[kickassangel]

I found UK doctors very reluctant to even test for thyroid, and ended up very ill, with life long side effect. I had symptoms since my teens, and no one would test me until my late 30s! It pretty much cost me my fertility and means I have one daughter from IVF.

My advice would be to go in there and insist on the test. It's a blood test, not particularly difficult or expensive, and it rules out a fundamental problem that affects every aspect of your health, so asking for it to be done is perfectly reasonable. Also, if it's recent, you might need to be tested a couple of months apart, to see if your thyroid levels are changing.

Good luck.

[Hopetogether]

Thank you all. I have an appointment Wednesday. I am going prepared with lists of my symptoms printed out: how much they affect me and also the knowledge I have on thyroid. Before they've always laughed it off. I've also been on 8 different pills in 18 months as they blame all my symptoms on this!!!