Men with hyperthyroidism — 2 years on carbimazole, unstable remission, emotional exhaustion. How did you cope?
2 years with hyperthyroidism (Graves’) - the emotional side is worse than the flare-ups. How did you get through it?
35M. I manage a team at work, so it’s decisions and people all day. At home I’ve got a small kid who needs me actually present, not just physically in the room. On top of that - 2 years on carbimazole, still no stable remission.
A few weeks ago we tried dropping the dose from 7.5mg to 5mg. Three weeks in, I had a flare. Heart racing, anxiety out of nowhere. Not a full thyroid storm, but enough to knock me sideways for a few days.
The physical stuff isn’t even the hard part anymore, honestly. It’s this hopelessness that keeps creeping back in. An emptiness that just sits there. Some days I catch myself feeling sorry for myself and I genuinely hate that about myself. Tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix. And there’s this feeling, hard to put into words, like I’ve hit some kind of wall and don’t have much left in the tank.
Maybe the worst part is feeling like nobody actually gets it. Doctors look at the labs, see numbers that are “mostly fine,” move on to the next thing. Even people close to me, they haven’t lived this, so how could they know what two years of hormones swinging around actually does to a person?
Part of it’s the illness itself, no doubt. The swings, the unstable dose, the flare. But part of it is just two years of carrying this without a real break, and honestly I can’t always tell where one ends and the other begins anymore.
Anyone been through something like this - long hyperthyroidism, remission that won’t stick, or just the weight of a chronic illness while working and raising a kid? How did you get through the exhaustion? Did switching treatment (RAI, surgery) actually change things emotionally, not just on paper? Did seeing someone for mental health alongside the endocrinologist help at all?
Any experience, even a small one, would mean a lot right now.
Ready to post. Just to check in outside the text itself: how are things feeling for you today?