Jessicarrot

I met with my Nuclear Medicine Dr. today to schedule my RAI. I will do a dosimetry study starting June 23 (Happy Birthday Miki) through the 27th, and the 27th is when I will get the treatment dose. I’ve been reading a lot on the thyca listserve about this process and everyone dreads the low-iodine diet. My Dr. is not a big believer in it so he left it up to me to decide if I wanted to do it. Hmmm. Do I want to give up seafood, dairy, and all packaged, processed or resturant foods? Tempting. Actually I probably will avoid most of those things, but I guess I don’t have to go nuts about it. The dosimetry study is interesting because there are very few places in the country that offer it. And its usually for people with very advanced cases. They give you a very low dose of radio-iodine and then monitor how your body processes it for a week with blood draws and scans. Usually they only do this for advanced cases to find out the maximum amount of radioactive iodine their body can handle. My cancer was contained in the thyroid so I will most likely get the standard dose but my Dr. wants me to do the study for future reference. Meaning, if I have a reacurrance. I would really rather not do this because it extends the time away from my kids by a week. But I am blessed to have a very supportive family. My SIL in is sending my neice Ellie to come and help me for two weeks, and my mil and mom have offered to help me. BJay thinks that it is important to know exactly how my body handles the radiation. I think he is right. So it looks like we have a plan.

Things I have to look forward to:

1. Going “hypo”–going off my thyroid replacement hormones

2. Bloating, irratability, foggy-headedness (Honestly can’t a woman catch a break? Is there anything we have to go through that doesn’t involve those symptoms?)

3. Being away from my babies.

4. Not being able to eat anything good.

5. Getting lit (J/K I mean being radioactive)

6. Possible loss of taste (Well I might not have had that to begin with–but this is the actual taste buds…temporarily)

7. Hairloss (But not like chemo, more like post-pardom hairloss, and it will come back)

8. Sleeping alone for at least 2 weeks

9. Feeling pretty crappy until the hormones stabilize again in my system

10. Sleeping more