Rather than just ablate my thyroid with radioactive iodine, I want to do a trial of Tapazole, possibly for a year and a half, along with alternative methods of dampening the thyroid and calming the immune system. Currently I take 20 mg of Tapazole (down from 40 mg for the first two weeks), 160 of propranolol (Innopran, an extended-release form), and alprazolam, for when the jitters get to be too much.
Graves' disease has turned me into a horrible grouch (actually, I was pretty grouchy to begin with), and my 5 -year-old deserves much better than that, so I take the alprazolam!
Initially, my regular physician started me on atenolol, a selective beta blocker that calms the heart but not the peripheral receptors, so I still felt like a big tuning fork—even my tongue had tremors. My endocrinologist gave me to understand that propranolol actually prevents some conversion of thyroxine (T4) to triiodothyronine (T3), and of course it makes the patient feel more relaxed by blocking the peripheral cholinergic receptors. I tried to wean down to 80 mg last week, but then on Christmas Day felt like a tuning fork again. I need to be more patient.
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