Recovering from the Ickies

Scott's on the mend.  Slowly, but surely.
We came to the conclusion that his problems were directly caused by him swinging from extreme hypothyroidism to being quite hyperthyroid within a little over two weeks.  After some reading and talking with his doctors we realized there were three reasons for this:
1) He was very hypothyroid so his Endocrinologist raised his dose of Synthroid, by a fairly significant amount.
2) He started being much more strict about food intake around the time of taking his medicine and stopped even drinking coffee with it.  The synthroid loves to be a greedy medicine and absorbs best when it is taken on a completely empty stomach.
3) He's been taking the medicine at bedtime.  Scott always takes his synthroid in the morning.  He's been working nights for the last few weeks and therefore takes the medicine immediately before going to sleep.  We discovered that synthroid has a much higher rate of absorption if you're sleeping when it starts being metabolized.
So, after over 9 hours straight of continuous palpitations on Thursday morning, and then several hours of them again that evening, along with just feeling terrible, they rearranged things at work again that night and Scott was able to stay home.  We had a phone conference with his Endocrinologist (thankfully she's awesome and didn't make us come in) first thing Friday morning, she lowered him meds again and discussed what we're going to do from here.  He slept the day away again on Friday and got up that evening (basically his first time out of bed in over 30 hours) and went to work that night.
You would think with him being hyperthyroid he would have been running around like a crazed, productive maniac, but apparently when you get really hyperthyroid you also get really tired.  And can't focus.  He decided the nurses must have hated him Friday night, because he could not think of aaanything and was a bumbling mess.  (Sorry ER nurses at University - thank you for putting up with him!)
Fortunately, he had last night off and has finally started feeling like he's among the living again.  He's lost over 13lbs in less than three weeks (I'm slightly jealous) and has had a headache for the last two days.  He's still having palpitations, but they subside within about 15 minutes now and are not as continuous anymore.  Because of the long acting time of Synthroid, it's going to take a couple days still for him to feel good again.  Thanks for the prayers if you sent them up for us.  Hopefully we can get somewhat regulated soon, because this is no fun.

The Ickies

Scott is feeling awful and we're a little worried.  They sent him home from work early last night (which NEVER happens as a resident) after doing an EKG and a load of labs on him.  He's been having intermittent palpitations over the last few weeks but usually it will just be one or two here and there.  

He started having them last night around 1am though and they wouldn't stop.  His pulse is completely irregular and he is feeling really just out of it and awful.  If you've ever had a palpitation you know they are uncomfortable - it almost takes your breath away and feels like your heart is flipping in your chest.  

After the palpitations continued for over two hours they did the EKG and ran labs.  The EKG showed that he's throwing PAC's (usually harmless but he shouldn't be having this many of them for such a long period of time).  His labs were normal except he has gone from super hypothyroid to very HYPERthyroid within about three weeks.  Now, this is not a steady level (it takes about 6 weeks to reach that), but his thyroid levels are definitely way off, which could be the primary contributing factor as to why he feels like crap.  He's finally asleep now after a very restless morning with a very irregular pulse still and I'm hoping he can sleep the rest of the day and feel better.  It's a little unnerving.

We'll be consulting our Endocrinologist about what to do, but are hoping we can get this fixed ASAP.  Please say a few prayers for him.  He's scheduled to work again tonight and I'm hoping he's feeling better - at least well enough to focus and get through eight hours.