It’s official: I am dangerously radioactive.
Over the past couple of days, the doctors shot me up with thyrogen, a protein that mimics THS (thyroid-stimulating hormone). As I explained earlier, this makes any unremoved thyroid cells crave iodine. And since I’ve been on a low iodine diet for a couple weeks, any iodine I ingest will be deployed to those cells.
Yesterday, I took the first of two radiated iodine pills — a lower dose, designed just to attach to thyroid cells so they’ll light up in a body scan and confirm that the doctors have correctly determined the amount of the second dose — the larger dose that burns out, or ablates, any lesions and/or leftover thryoid cells.
The excellent news: they found no evidence that thyroid cells had traveled anywhere in my body. (This had been a concern because they’d found cancerous cells in my thyroid’s veins, which could have meant that the cancer had migrated elsewhere.) It’s possible that some lesions too small for the scan to have picked up; indeed, the doctor said additional lesions do show up in about one in twenty patients when they have their second scan (mine is scheduled for the end of next week). But even in those cases, there’s no problem because the very fact that they show up means that they’re targeted for ablation.
So they gave me the second dose. It was a surprisingly somber ritual: confirming my name and birth date, opening the metal (and, I presume, lead-lined) jar, pulling out and opening a clear vial, tipping the single gray capsule into a small cup, handing it carefully to me, and hovering while I swallowed it with a cup of water.
Even though it was the second dose, it was the first time I felt like radiation was involved.
For the next several days, while I am figuratively glowing (I’m not literally glowing, alas…), I have keep isolated — at least six feet away from everyone, (even farther from pregnant women and young children), and no public gatherings. I mustn’t share food or utensils with others. Etc. So the kids are at their mom’s for a few days, leaving me to roam the house without worrying about their health.
As I write this, I’m three hours in, and my reaction so far is pretty mild. A small percentage of people can’t keep the pill down in the first place; thankfully, I am not one of them. I’m feeling a tiny bit of soreness in my salivary glands; saliva is one of the ways the body expels the radiation, so the glands are in right in the line of fire. The doctor said I may want some ibuprofen, if that soreness gets too bad. But sucking on sour candies every hour for the first 24-36 hours should keep them active and lessen the pain a bit.
And yes, that means I’ll be up all night tonight. It’s been a long time since I’ve pulled an all-nighter, and I take a lot longer to recover than I used to. But it’s the most effective way to protect the glands, so I’ll muscle through. (The doctor warned, though, that if I fall asleep having started this sour-candy regimen, my glands would dry out, which would leave the radiation just sitting there. That would be bad!)
Above all, I’m supposed to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. As the doctor said, “Of the ten most important things you need to do, hydration is number one through nine.”
In a week, things will be more or less back to normal — though I have a paper I need to carry around with me for a couple months, in case I set off a radiation detector. I didn’t realize this, but some places — bridges, government buildings, etc. — have such detectors, and the doctor knew of several cases where patients had set them off.
Not that I get out much these days…
Photo by Nite Watches Alpha