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hel_anastarted too early, but made me feel a lot better about the whole situation.
We got there early, and waited for almost an hour. I finally met the doctor (i'd talked to him on the phone, but we hadn't met face to face). He went over the steps going forward, and answered the couple of questions I had.
He also told me that I get to go off the Damned LID and go back on medication on Sunday. Yay! Toasted bacon and tomato sandwiches for me!
He also looked at my skin and said "well, you aren't *too* hypo.. some of the really hypo patients I get you could strike matches on their skin". Yuck. Something to not ever look forward to.
Then I had to have blood drawn. Six vials, because in addition to all the normal tests, they had some wierd ones, and a pregnancy test. (Surprising no-one, the pregnancy test came back negative, though if it had come back positive, I'd have had to conceed an act of God and admit that the universe *really* didn't want me to have the RAI.) Because they won't proceed without a negative pregnancy test, my father and I had time to go to lunch. We got back before the test results, so had to wait a bit.
Finally, I found myself in the basement along with a lot of lead, a tiny beaker with a miniscule amount of liquid in it, and a straw. I sucked the stuff up (fortified with water), and we were on our way. I did get to talk to the lab technician, who was a great source of information, and the conversation made me feel a *lot* better about the whole thing.
As it turns out, at this point I'm "just barely a bit radioactive girl", which is fine by me. I'll be more radioactive on Friday, but by how much won't be clear till friday morning.
Basically, I have to go back, they'll scan me, then feed the results of a scan into a program which will determine doses and lengths of precautions (based on the dose, x # of days till I can share a bed or kiss someone, be around small children, etc, etc) Then I'll spend Friday afternoon in an isolated room, reading, drinking water, sucking on sour lemon candies, and peeing. Lots. Apparently about half the radioactive iodine will be out of my system, down the toilet, by the time I leave that afternoon between four and five.
Then I spend the weekend by myself, and I go back on Tuesday for a Whole Body Scan, wherein they determine what's already been killed, and what still remains to be killed, and establish a baseline for my first scan dose next year. (Apparently the stuff can continue to work in your system, killing off thyroid cells, for about six months.)
We also establish the treatment/maintenance program going forward, based on the scan and some of my hormone levels.
So it's all good, and I felt a lot better emotionally after I finished. Exhausted as all hell physically, but that's not surprising.
Did I mention I get pizza on Sunday? And go back on my meds?
We got there early, and waited for almost an hour. I finally met the doctor (i'd talked to him on the phone, but we hadn't met face to face). He went over the steps going forward, and answered the couple of questions I had.
He also told me that I get to go off the Damned LID and go back on medication on Sunday. Yay! Toasted bacon and tomato sandwiches for me!
He also looked at my skin and said "well, you aren't *too* hypo.. some of the really hypo patients I get you could strike matches on their skin". Yuck. Something to not ever look forward to.
Then I had to have blood drawn. Six vials, because in addition to all the normal tests, they had some wierd ones, and a pregnancy test. (Surprising no-one, the pregnancy test came back negative, though if it had come back positive, I'd have had to conceed an act of God and admit that the universe *really* didn't want me to have the RAI.) Because they won't proceed without a negative pregnancy test, my father and I had time to go to lunch. We got back before the test results, so had to wait a bit.
Finally, I found myself in the basement along with a lot of lead, a tiny beaker with a miniscule amount of liquid in it, and a straw. I sucked the stuff up (fortified with water), and we were on our way. I did get to talk to the lab technician, who was a great source of information, and the conversation made me feel a *lot* better about the whole thing.
As it turns out, at this point I'm "just barely a bit radioactive girl", which is fine by me. I'll be more radioactive on Friday, but by how much won't be clear till friday morning.
Basically, I have to go back, they'll scan me, then feed the results of a scan into a program which will determine doses and lengths of precautions (based on the dose, x # of days till I can share a bed or kiss someone, be around small children, etc, etc) Then I'll spend Friday afternoon in an isolated room, reading, drinking water, sucking on sour lemon candies, and peeing. Lots. Apparently about half the radioactive iodine will be out of my system, down the toilet, by the time I leave that afternoon between four and five.
Then I spend the weekend by myself, and I go back on Tuesday for a Whole Body Scan, wherein they determine what's already been killed, and what still remains to be killed, and establish a baseline for my first scan dose next year. (Apparently the stuff can continue to work in your system, killing off thyroid cells, for about six months.)
We also establish the treatment/maintenance program going forward, based on the scan and some of my hormone levels.
So it's all good, and I felt a lot better emotionally after I finished. Exhausted as all hell physically, but that's not surprising.
Did I mention I get pizza on Sunday? And go back on my meds?
