I have Hashimoto's and a goiter which causes compression. My endo has been talking with me about surgery to relieve the compression. First, though, he wants me to undergo a sleep study because he thinks I might have sleep apnea (obstructed airway). I think he wants to rule out some of my symptoms before ok'ing surgery. ( Apparently I snore, and I am very tired during the day.) Has anyone had any problems with sleep apnea and goiter?

Answer:

What a wise doctor to think that someone who is having the thyroid compress their trachea could possibly have obstructive sleep apnea! (If the sarcasm isn't clear, that was another way to say, "Duh1 what a moron, did he really graduate elementary school?)

Classic symptoms of goiter include choking awake in your sleep, snoring, and food getting stuck in the upper throat.

My thyroid was never classifed as large, but it impeded my breathing. Eventually when my Armour was cut I woke up choking in the middle of the night, went through the sleep studies, and after getting my CPAP machine and still feeling terrible increased my own Armour in spite of hearing my doctor say, "Your thyroid is adequately treated, your other problems are not thyroid" a dozen times. That was certainly a joke. The first night I increased from 2 to 3 grains of Armour I slept all night. Before increasing, I tried laying on my stomach with my neck straight, and my pillow in a depression to keep my mouth and nose slightly above the mattress. I still couldn't breathe decently even in that position. But increase Armour thyroid and problem was solved.

Note below from levothyroid information that one treatment to reduce a goiter (and avoid making your surgeon rich much to his dismay) is to suppress the TSH. (That means keep it very close to -0- and -0- is OK!. I don't feel well if my TSH is a positive number other than -0-. (Is -0- a positive number? I don't remember for sure.)

Some docs will tell you that not suppressing TSH when the thyroid is growing is a big cause of thyroid cancer.

But as I found when I suffered from chronic fatigue, my triglyceride levels, my BP as it went up with the undertreatment of thyroid and sleep apnea, and any other thing my doctor could think of was more important than treating my thyroid induced chronic fatigue / more like coma state.

Not to mention, when my doctor was telling me each time I asked for more thyroid "it's not your thyroid" I was telling both my family doctor and the ENT who did the sleep studies and got me the CPAP that I had choked awake and food was getting stuck in my throat, two symptoms I found on a university website classic for a goiter, that is an enlarged thyroid even if the ultrasound said the size was normal. Did they even look to see if it compressed the trachea? Well, it did.

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