Doctorial Adventures

I had a doctor's appointment today with a doctor I found in the phone book. I was hoping he'd run some more tests on my thyroid and let me try a new medicine. He wasn't as open minded as I wanted him to be, which is a little bit disappointing.

I wanted him to test the free T3/T4, since when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, Dr. Miller only ran the TSH test. Well, Dr. McGowan said that for HYPO patients, the TSH is all that counts, that the T3/T4 only really makes a difference for HYPER patients, but he said he would run the tests anyway. So that was slightly disappointing, but I honestly feel like the TSH isn't doing enough, or the Levothyroxine would have solved the problem almost six months ago. Speaking of Levothyroxine, he said there are only two prescriptions he "requires" his patients to get brand name--Synthroid and some other drug. He said he thinks there is a big enough difference between Synthroid and Levo, so he switched me; it's worth trying at least. I asked him about a medicine called Armour I read about on a thyroid internet forum. It's dessicated pig thyroid, which supposedly resembles the human thyroid the closest. Everyone who's been on it has had wonderful things to say about it, so I thought it might be interesting, but he didn't really seem interested in it. He told me they use horse thyroid now instead of pig and all they do to make it is take the thyroid out of the horse and mash it up into a pill or something. I so did not want to hear that. His main points were all about how the thyroid meds are for life and finding the right dosage is the most important step in fixing the problem; something about Armour being too hard to pin down a stable TSH dosage.
I also went in to get my PCOS checked out, since my face makes me look like a 13 year old boy and it's so frustrating. I told him I'm cycling by myself again (whoo-hooo for too much information!) which is exciting, but that the Metformin must not be working all the way, since I still have all the unwanted, ugly PCOS symptoms. He didn't really address the PCOS, but told me to check back with my gynecologist (Dr. Miller) about that. I'm not entirely sure why, since I came in there wanting to schedule a glucose test and an insulin test to see how close I am to full-blown diabetes, or if I'm still just hanging out with insulin resistance. The more insulin resistant I am, the more unwanted PCOS symptoms I'm going to have, so I want to get this fixed now! Dr. McGowan did go ahead and refer me to a dermatologist to see if he has any extra special medication for my acne, but I doubt it will really help, since it is the PCOS causing it!
Overall, I'm not quite happy. I was hoping for a little bit more open mindedness, even about the T3/T4, let alone the Armour. It's still worth trying out, but some of the thyroid symptoms are downright scary, so I don't want to just hang out indefinitely with all these problems. If nothing changes, it looks like I'll be doctor shopping for a while.