Cold intolerance and persistent fatigue together are two of the most common signs of an underactive thyroid, but both are also nonspecific — they overlap with anemia, depression, and poor sleep. A simple TSH/free T4 blood test is the right next step, not a guess.
The first question is what type your mother had. Medullary thyroid cancer is strongly hereditary and comes with clear genetic-testing guidance; the far more common papillary/follicular types raise relative risk roughly 8-10x with one affected parent, but there's no standard screening program — major guidelines still recommend against routine screening even then.
An 8mm thyroid nodule sits below the biopsy threshold in ATA guidelines (10mm for higher-suspicion features, 15mm for low-suspicion) — size itself isn't a strong cancer predictor under 4cm. What actually matters is the nodule's ultrasound features, and asking for its TI-RADS category.
Thyroid screening (TSH, free T4) is the standard first step for unexplained weight gain, but an underactive thyroid typically explains only a few kilograms — not 10kg. A broader panel (fasting glucose/HbA1c, iron, vitamin D, cortisol) is usually needed to find the real cause.
A thyroid diagnostic package in Istanbul runs about $400-500, an ultrasound about $120-160, a biopsy $600-2,700, and thyroid surgery $3,800-8,100. Wellmap's verified endocrinology option in Turkey is a metabolic medicine centre — strongest where hormones and weight overlap.
An endocrinologist consultation in Georgia costs roughly $20-50. Georgia's verified endocrinology clinic is GI Rimon Med in Batumi — not a diabetes centre, but a medical centre where endocrinology sits beside IVF, gynaecology and paediatrics.