I januar i år, britiske Jacqueline Falkowski har sendt et brev til Mr David Stewart MSP, Public Petitions Committee, Scottish Parliament i Edinburgh, UK.

Hun indleder sit brev med disse ord:

If you are reading this letter I have successfully ended my life after an interminable battle with hypothyroidism. Until doctors learn to listen and work with the patient instead of trying to control the patient there will be many more deaths after me, as there have been many before me.

I have been caused tremendous unnecessary suffering and irreparable damage to my body and brain from being left undiagnosed for at least 26 years, but was not diagnosed at the time because my Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) never went over 10, and then I was put on the wrong thyroid hormone (TH) therapy, thyroxine (T4) instead of liothyronine (T3), because T4 is the only accepted form of TH therapy in the UK, and because GPs and endocrinologists do not recognise conversion issues or peripheral cellular resistance to TH or T3 deficiency - all of which I have and which the TSH doesn‘t pick up - and then being treated for years on an inadequate amount of TH (T4-replacement only) therapy.

I have had an enormous uphill battle trying to get doctors to believe me and take my symptoms seriously. My GP was adamant that my thyroid was fine and my symptoms were all in my head. When my slim size 8 frame started to expand to a size 14 (now 20), I was reprimanded for eating too much and not exercising despite being a healthy eater, a sailor and extremely active. My GP continued prescribing medications for each individual hypothyroid symptom I was suffering, which must have cost the NHS a fortune. He even went so far as to tell other doctors and consultants that he believed my symptoms were all functional and caused by a psychiatric disorder, even though I had never been diagnosed with one. It was humiliating and frustrating!

(...)

Everything to date failed including petitions and solicitations to various Members of Parliament in the UK, including my own MP, Bob Neill, the Royal College of Physicians, British Thyroid Foundation, British Thyroid Association, Society for Endocrinologist, Society of Clinical Biochemists, each and every endocrinologist and a plethora of letters to the General Medical Council who do not wish to embrace this matter.

You are our only hope right now. You hold the future and lives of hundreds of thousands of thyroid patients in the UK (and millions worldwide) in your hands. I hope that the petitions committee will take heed from my letter that the plight of thyroid patients is very real and a truly desperate one and that you will urgently consider heading your own inquiry to address this parlous situation. You cannot allow thousands of patients in Scotland to be abandoned to poor quality existence or suicide because of inexplicable obduracy among the endocrine profession and the medical establishment.

If the Scottish Parliament can initiate change in the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid disease in Scotland thus highlighting the global magnitude of this crisis affecting women, it may encourage other countries to carry out their own investigations into this terrible scandal and ultimately save millions of lives.

Yours sincerely

Jacqueline Falkowski

Hele brevet kan læses hos Sheila Turner, på hjemmesiden Thyroid Patient Advocacy i UK.

Det kan blive en ganske lærerig oplevelse, idet de britiske og de skandinaviske endokrinolog-organisationer samarbejder ganske tæt med hinanden, og alt som sker for lavt stofskifte-patienter i UK, nøjagtig i samme udstrækning sker også hos os i Skandinavien. Skandinaverne skriver bare sjældent breve...

Kun guderne ved, hvor mange skandinaviske syge måtte opgive livet, mens endokrinologerne bare fortsætter med at oplære fastlæger i tal-lege, i stedet for at udøve medicin.