Hi all! I'm on my fourth week and I consider myself officially a non-smoker! I have no desire to go back and now that I have Grave's Disease and I'm symptomatic, I know that there's no way I can go back to smoking. I can't go on thyroid meds until after my uptake scan next week, so unfortunately the problem isn't being taken care of yet but it will be soon. My heart rate is around 110 and 115 bpm due to the Graves (my blood pressure is good) so they gave me beta blockers to bring it down temporarily. Having a constant heart rate like that is taxing, but I just started taking the beta blockers last night they have really helped a lot. I was worried they would make my blood pressure too low, since my blood pressure has been at a good level, but they haven't, so I was apparently worrying over nothing.
Unfortunately, since I have Graves and especially since I'm not yet on meds to stabilize everything, I can't take anything like a decongestant. The constant throat clearing was driving me insane and everyone around me also so I stated taking Claritin-D. It works beautifully at controlling the need to clear my throat constantly. I never even have to remember when it's time to take it because within an hour or an hour and 1/2 of my next dose time(every 24 hours), I have to start clearing my throat a lot.
At my Endo appt, they were very serious when they said "STOP! You can't take that or any other decongestant, it's too dangerous". I started to realize it might be the reason why my symptoms are so bad this time and why my heart rate is so fast. That about broke my heart, but then they said I could take regular Claritin, so I went and got some.....only it doesn't work at all. I don't know of anything else that would act like a decongestant that is not a stimulant also. It's really pretty annoying since the Grave's was keeping me from sleeping due to my fast heart rate, but now that I have the beta blockers and will be able to sleep, I will be kept up by the need to constantly clear my throat! ARGH! I will get through this and it certainly doesn't make me want to smoke. It just upsets me that I smoked in the first place and it likely caused all this! Rant over.
On the plus side, I'm really thankful that I haven't had to battle very hard to quit smoking since I've been so distracted with health. It could've been so much worse than it has been.
