Graves Disease

The verdict is in.  Based on the amount of iodine present in Norah’s thyroid during her scans and her blood test results, Norah has been diagnosed with Graves Disease.  Graves is an autoimmune disorder which causes antibodies to stimulate the thyroid gland to produce more thyroid hormone even though the pituitary gland isn’t calling for it.  The uptake scans showed no nodules, which is good because that would have required in-depth investigation into what was causing them.

Graves Disease is not that common in 4-year-olds and Children’s Hospital most often sees it in teenagers (it’s most common in 30-40YO women), but that may be because it goes undiagnosed for years.  The symptoms are not such that you would immediately think something was physically wrong…hyperactivity, excessive emotion, and overeating could all be personality traits or a phase.  Norah’s blood pressure and heart rate are high, but if she hadn’t developed the goiter (swollen thyroid), the heart issues may not have been traced back to her thyroid.

She’ll begin taking medication (Methimazole) tonight, and will have to take it morning and night.  Her thyroid levels and blood counts will be checked every few weeks to see if the dosage is correct and to watch for a rare side-effect of the medication which is low blood counts which can affect clotting and infection.  Hyperthyroidism can be difficult to regulate, so at some point in the future the doctors may recommend ablating or removing her thyroid and putting her on a daily thyroid supplement.  Unless there are problems with the medication I don’t expect this treatment to be suggested until she’s done growing.

There is a chance that the condition will go into remission within the next year or two, but given her age and the severity her doctor said that the chances are less than 30%.  All of her symptoms should be resolved as soon as we get the meds adjusted correctly, so that’s something to look forward to.

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