14th May 2008
Hi trish,
It normally takes 6 weeks to see the full effect of a particular dose of tapazole. Whether it's the ideal dose or not is sometimes questionable but it's where you gotta start at. Sometimes you get it right on the first shot and sometimes you gotta play with it a little. It's very normal to feel almost immediate relief and then a creeping back of symptoms as things are adjusting. The other thing is sometimes hyper and hypo symptoms can overlap and it's hard to tell the difference as to whether you're getting too much or too little until the next set of labs.
My gut feeling would be to back off some on the exercise. Don't stop entirely but exercise produces the need for more stress hormones and that's the last thing you need right now. Try and keep things in moderation. If you weren't heading off on vacation, I'd suggest you'd wait it out. However, that kinda puts you in a pickle cause a good case of hyper can totally ruin your day. My suggestion would be to see if you can't get an appt for before you leave. In fact, as soon as possible cause 3 weeks aint' real far off. See if you can't get some beta blockers to curb some of the symptoms until the tapazole has time to take full effect. Have the doctor instruct you on proper adjustment of dose to keep your pulse and bp within a certain range and get yourself a bp monitor that also shows your pulse and check it twice a day before you take a dose and a couple hours afterwards to make sure you're staying in range. You can actually keep yourself feeling pretty good if you have a little play to work with on the dose you're allowed to take of a beta blocker. Propranolol controls more symptoms but I find atenolol is easier to adjust and it works pretty darned good. Some docs like metropolol but I find it makes my brain mushy.
I hope you have a marvelous vacation. Your old self will be back but don't expect perfection for a little while to come. You should be able to maintain though and still be able to have a good time. Good luck.
It normally takes 6 weeks to see the full effect of a particular dose of tapazole. Whether it's the ideal dose or not is sometimes questionable but it's where you gotta start at. Sometimes you get it right on the first shot and sometimes you gotta play with it a little. It's very normal to feel almost immediate relief and then a creeping back of symptoms as things are adjusting. The other thing is sometimes hyper and hypo symptoms can overlap and it's hard to tell the difference as to whether you're getting too much or too little until the next set of labs.
My gut feeling would be to back off some on the exercise. Don't stop entirely but exercise produces the need for more stress hormones and that's the last thing you need right now. Try and keep things in moderation. If you weren't heading off on vacation, I'd suggest you'd wait it out. However, that kinda puts you in a pickle cause a good case of hyper can totally ruin your day. My suggestion would be to see if you can't get an appt for before you leave. In fact, as soon as possible cause 3 weeks aint' real far off. See if you can't get some beta blockers to curb some of the symptoms until the tapazole has time to take full effect. Have the doctor instruct you on proper adjustment of dose to keep your pulse and bp within a certain range and get yourself a bp monitor that also shows your pulse and check it twice a day before you take a dose and a couple hours afterwards to make sure you're staying in range. You can actually keep yourself feeling pretty good if you have a little play to work with on the dose you're allowed to take of a beta blocker. Propranolol controls more symptoms but I find atenolol is easier to adjust and it works pretty darned good. Some docs like metropolol but I find it makes my brain mushy.
I hope you have a marvelous vacation. Your old self will be back but don't expect perfection for a little while to come. You should be able to maintain though and still be able to have a good time. Good luck.