Jessicarrot

BJay stopped by to bring me sour candy and flowers. The safe distance he kept reminded me of before we were engaged. What flatters me now is that I see how it must feel to fear the one you love. He was all teary-eyed and gloomy and it made me feel somewhat mortal. I was on this radioactive power-trip and I just realized that the people I love are worried about me. Never you fear loves! I am interned here safe and cozy in my brown slippers Crysta gave me before my first surgery and in my pink pj bottoms I bought with Piper in CA right after I found out I was pregnant with Asher. I’m feeling fine, but still sleepy after my nap so tackling the trim painting will have to wait a little bit. I have tons of reading and projects to do. I try not to think about my sweet babies because I don’t want my radioactive tears to flood the house. In the grand scheme of things, this is really just a moment. And very brief. A small price to pay for a lifetime with the people I love the most.

So this is day one of my radioactive blog-athon. I received my dose of 150milicures of radio-active iodine this morning just before 11am. The dose was secure in a vial inside of a (lead?) container that I sipped through a straw without picking it up off the counter. The first time I took the .5milicure dose I thought I detected a slightly tingly sensation, but not so this time. Must have imagined it or something. One moment I was just Jessica, thyroid cancer patient and seconds later I became Jessica, radioactive bio-hazard. LOL. Its interesting I hadn’t thought much about how I’d feel as a radioactive person, but it was very odd. The Nuclear Radiation safety officer took a reading. (Nobody was wearing hazmat suites or anything, and my dosing didn’t take place behind any kind of screen.) There were people in chairs, possibly awaiting their own doses of something crazy. Then the NRSO immediately escorted me out of the hospital. It took three elevator passes to find one empty of other passengers. The first two had moms and babies. Then I was set free into the great wide world, pulsating with radiation and everyone was completely unaware. I had this odd empowering burst of energy when I stepped out into the sun after waiting around 2 hours in the basement. I felt the sun beating down on me and for the first time in my life I felt like I could challenge it back. Take that, sun! You aren’t the only one emitting radiation today! Of course I steered clear of everyone, walking at least 10 feet away from people, got in my car and drove strait home. I like the idea of being able to refer to myself unabashedly as “hot”. In a minute I’m going to take a nap and focus all my energy on seeking out and ablating all those leftover thyroid cells. The dosimetry study showed that my body is very efficient in eliminating this radioactive stuff fairly quickly. I should be safe around other people in 3-5 days my Dr said. At the 7 day point he said I can effectively stop all precautions. There was no evidence of any cancer spread and it looks like only about 5% of my thyroid remains after surgery. All good signs and its quite possible that I won’t need another RAI. Time will tell. Right now I believe we can kick this pesky little cancer’s butt the first try.

Well I went to the hospital this morning all prepared and psyched to ingest my radioactive iodine. Today was the last day of my dosimetry study, which concluded in a very uncomfortable 40+ minute whole body scan. I did not anticipate how painful it was going to be to my lower back laying there for so long. I survived though. I talked with a very mild mannered Nuclear Radiation Safety Officer about my living situation and exposure risks to my family. Once the study was finished I noticed that there was a mad flurry to crunch the numbers and process all the data they collected. I settled in for a good long magazine read and my CNMT friend Josh told me to go get something light to eat and my Dr. would probably want to talk to me in about 30 minutes. I was just starting to resign myself to yet another boring salad when Josh came up and told me that the Dr. wants me to wait until Monday for my dose! Errrr. Best laid plans and all. Drs. have this luxury of doing whatever is most convenient for them. And I think they are secretly all sadists. So my very tight, planned out schedule is going to have to be rearranged. I called BJay completely annoyed and he was stoked. “Great!” He says, “Lets go camping!” Aside from lining up full-time child care for a different set of dates, this means that I’m stuck on my annoying low-iodine diet for another three days. I can’t tell you how tired I am of boiled chicken and rice and salad. I think I could hack it a lot easier if I was actually losing weight. Diets are much more encouraging when you are dropping some pounds. But the scale hasn’t budged. I guess I should be glad I’m not gaining. (I guess there is a tendency to gain weight in this process.) Plus I have to be off my meds another few days… and I’m going to be on the more-radioactive side when my dad’s family arrives for our quasi-family reunion on Wednesday. But, the Dr. thought it would be better if he had more time to review the data and set me up with just the right dose. I guess that is reasonable. It just really, really stinks that the end is pushed back another few days. The NRSO was saying that once I get my dose, he’ll take a reading with a Geiger-type device at 3 feet and 6 feet and then promptly escort me out of the hospital. (The Nuc Med department just happens to be located in the basement of the women’s hospital. Yikes!) Did you know that we get the equivalent of about 20 x-ray’s worth of radiation from the atmosphere? More if you do a lot of flying. The first two days I’m radioactive sitting next to me for 1 hour will expose you to the equivalent of 1 x-ray. After the first two days most of the radioactive material will have been excreted from my body by urine or sweat. But pretty much everything I touch will be radioactive until I wipe it down. So the risks are fairly low to my family but they still recommend limiting close contact with the children for 2 weeks. I knew that the NRC guidelines were pretty conservative, but I only planned for a week. Doing the dosimetry study will also tell us pretty precisely when I will be out of the danger zone. I’m going to have to just get used to all the motherly guilt I’m bound to experience soon.

I’ve been commuting between my house and the hospital where I’m having my treatments every day this week.  During the hour + drive I listen to NPR because, frankly, I wouldn’t begin to know what music channel to listen to.  The other morning a story came on that was an endearing trip down memory lane.   Like a lot of GI’s kids I had the great privilege of living in Germany as a child.  We lived in a German neighborhood for the first year or two and then on Rhein Main AFB for the rest of the time.  When we lived off base we were bussed in to school.  I attended Halverson elementary school.  Our school was named for the famous “Candy Bomber” known to post WWII East German children as “Uncle Wiggle Wings”.  This story always makes me cry.  After the war Germany was sliced up like a pie.  The Allies (US, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) took control of portions of Germany.  The Soviet Union’s plan to rebuild Germany differed so much from the other allies plans that they ordered everyone out and stopped supplies from getting in to East Germany.  The people in East Germany, having just been through a war had lived on sub-starvation rations for years already.  Tensions were high, any attempt to alleviate suffering could easily have led to WWIII.  A British Commander suggested an alternative, an airlift.  Allied forces would drop food, fuel and supplies from the air.  It was a beautiful moment in history in my opinion.  Lt. Gail S. Halverson was one pilot who was a part of the effort to get food to the East Germans.  The NPR story talked about how Halverson split two sticks of gum he had to share with some East German children.  He was so struck by their reaction that he decided to do something he named “operation little vittles”.  He told the children to look for his plane and he’d drop candy to them.  When they asked him how they’d know it was him, he said he’d wiggle his wings as a sign.  He bought up all the candy he could find and took up donations from his friends and coworkers from their rations and tied chocolate and gum to handkerchiefs so that he could drop candy from his plane.  These were children who didn’t have enough food to eat.  The idea of candy was magical for them.  The NPR story said that to this day, Col. Halverson is a celebrity in Berlin and 70 year olds will come up to him with the handkerchiefs they collected from his candy drops.  Then Lt. Halverson was breaking the rules to do this sweet act of compassion and charity.  He was nearly courtmartialed, but when other pilots heard about his operation, they began dropping candy as well.  I got to meet Col. Halverson when he came to Germany for our elementary school dedication.  I also attended church with his grandchildren so as an added bonus he also was there for my little brother’s first pinewood derby race in cub scouts.  I shyly asked if he would pose for a picture with my brother and his car.  He was such a sweet, down to earth guy.  He not only posed for the picture, but he hammed it up as well.  I have got to dig up those pictures somewhere.  It is men like Halverson that keep hope alive  in this world.  Things are looking bleak, there are so many things to worry about and get uptight about.  But I know that whatever is likely to descend on us there will be people who will hold up beacons of hope and compassion.  I know it because humanity is created by God, its in our nature to bridge the chasms of ugliness and brutality.

I read a few blogs, not a ton. Mostly ones from people I know. Usually I read to stay caught up on people’s lives that I know. There are a few, and very few that I read because I’m actually interested in someones opinion on things. When I venture out into the great unknown to see what bloggers are thinking I always find it suspicious when people fitting just the right stereotype post comments. Like when the polygamists in Texas were in the news. There were quite a few blog-posts on the subject and I was completely skeptical when all these “Muslims” and FLDS “Mormons” came out of the woodwork to defend the practice of plural marriage. Really? Where they really for real? Seemed awfully convenient to me. Then there was this highly conservative blog about how the price of premarital sex is that now 1/5 of the adult population have genital herpes. Wow. But then there was this comment by a woman married 20 some years who said she married her husband as a virgin but she’d never had an orgasm. That seems pretty far fetched to me. She was wondering if she would have had a more fulfilling sex life if she had had a few more partners before she tied the knot. I’m not saying that couldn’t happen, I’m just saying its a pretty convenient argument. And it sounds like that lame movie with Diane Keaton “Because I said so.” My favorite are the people who get offended about everything. You share an opinion on something and they get offended. Now I’ve met people like that so I know they exist. Usually they are soooo much more enlightened and intelligent than us normal folk. They are also whiny and annoying so not many people are willing to actually spend a lot of time with them. They are also extremely self-centered so there is no room in their universe for something as radical as a differing opinion. But they are willing to make idiots of themselves because they are so desperate for attention. Masters at manipulation, these people will do anything to engage you in an argument. Anything. It is best to ignore these people. You can’t fix them or counsel them or fill their need for attention. It makes me wonder what they did before the internet? Maybe they had therapists. Maybe having internet venues to whine on gives them a sense of purpose. Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. Maybe they feel exacting and in control. Years ago these people were called trolls. I don’t know if that term is used anymore. I don’t think its a big deal for someone to anonymously troll for whatever psychological need they have to fill. One of the saddest things I’ve read though was a blog where someones dad was trolling her. That is all kinds of messed up. I am lucky enough to have been born to parents who are grown-ups. I don’t know if they were there when I was born or if they grew up along the way, but I know that they don’t need me to fill their psychological or emotional voids. I can actually have meaningful, enjoyable conversations with them. All the time. I never realized that was such a blessing. More proof that my parents are awesome.

So I’m doing a dosimetry study as part of my cancer treatment.  There are only a few cancer centers in the country that offer it.  Jury is still out on whether or not that is a bad thing.  Yesterday I was gone 12 hours driving, waiting, getting blood drawn, waiting, getting whole body scans, waiting.  Oh, and I got to fast until 3pm because the lab was super slow getting my blood work done.  Today was supposed to be just a quick blood draw, laser-type thingie and a wbs, in the door and out in about 30 minutes… ha.  There is no such thing as “quick” anything at the hospital.  The WBS machine was down until noon which meant that I had to go shopping.  I had to.  There was nothing else to do but sit in the nasty hospital waiting room.  This is getting expensive.  Between the gas driving 140 miles round trip every day and amusing myself in my old college town while waiting for one technician or another to get something done I am spending a lot of money every day.  Still beats chemo by a long shot.  But I miss my babies when I’m gone all day.

A friend of mine clued me in to a nearby country club selling season pool passes to non-residents for $100/family. It was such a bargain I’ve even braved peak-sun to take my Lilly-white children swimming. Last year I was so pregnant and it was so hot I rarely ventured out of the house. By the end of the summer my kids were white as sheets. Even Hila who is naturally more olive-skinned. Hannah has that same skin color and already has a better tan than I can ever dream of. The girls are just lucky that way. We’re going to have to buy sunscreen in bulk this year. I was really proud though, the first day we came back from the pool and Hila said, “Mom, that was soooo fun!” I’m really enjoying my time with the kids right now. I know I’m only going to be without them for a week, but its been a long-anticipated week of dread. As it approaches I feel very calm about it. So far the hypo-symptoms are not nearly as bad as I expected them to be. As long as I line up a lot of projects to do I’m sure the week will pass fairly quickly. My RAI date is June 27th. About a week away! By the time I get my dose I’ll be off my meds completely for 3 weeks. I’ve found that while the thyroid cancer support group is helpful in some ways, it tends to scare me more than put me at ease. I remember thinking when I first started reading people’s posts, “Come on, ya’ll… its not that bad.” And then I started thinking…maybe it is that bad. I know I haven’t had the chance to be radioactive and lose my sense of taste yet, but if that is as bad as it gets (*knock on wood*) this cancer is a sneeze compared to say, the flu. Or pregnancy. Or almost anything else I have to compare it to. I hope I’m not setting myself up for something by saying that.

Anyway, I’ve got Hila’s favorite cousin for lunch and then we’re all going swimming. Its really great having an activity to hold over the kid’s heads until they get their chores done.

I’m a full week off of all thyroid medication in preparation for my radio active iodine treatments. I’m also fairly religiously following my low-iodine diet. There are very few things I can eat. No seafood, no dairy, no eggs, no prepared foods or resturant foods containing salt. That pretty much strikes everything but fresh fruits and veggies, meat and steamed rice. I can have bread if I make it but I’m pretty unmotivated. I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself at the two father’s day meals we attended at my parent’s and BJay’s parents today when the options for me were peas, ham and water. I am also feeling the effects of no thyroid hormone. I’m naturally a little foggy-headed at times, clumsy, and I can’t get my words out. Now that is all exaggerated and I’m pretty tired. So I was starting to feel sorry for myself until I read this post that my friend Jamie linked on her blog. She and her sisters are taking care of their mom while she’s going through chemo. It ripped my heart out of my chest and my heart isn’t even connected to their mom. Life is so amazing. All the sudden I don’t feel so tired. I don’t feel so hungry. I just feel grateful. I can handle this. Its nothing compared to chemo.

BJay has been talking about this concept for months now, and I think its brilliant.  His idea was to privatize health care and take it out of the hands of employers.  Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel has just come out with a book that lays out this type of Universal Healthcare plan.  I am willing to eat my words–if any candidate is smart enough to use this plan I WILL VOTE FOR HIM!

From PBS Now in the News

DR. EMANUEL: Our proposal is for universal healthcare vouchers. It’s a plan where everybody in America gets a voucher to buy health insurance from an insurance company or health plan or a managed care organization. And they get a basic benefits package. If they want to buy more, they want—wider choice of doctors, they want better services, say, better eye glass services, or they want more mental health services, they can pay more and they can buy up.

Their employer isn’t involved, so there’s continuity. They stay—stay with the same plan whether they change jobs, or unfortunately get fired. The plans cannot, say, “We’re going to exclude you for preexisting conditions.” They have to reinsure that.

BRANCACCIO: What’s in it for—’cause you still have insurance companies in this plan. You haven’t eradicated insurance companies. So—what if you’re decrepit, and you show up—with your little voucher. Why should they take you?

DR. EMANUEL: So every insurance company would, to participate, would be required to take the voucher. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that doesn’t mean that they would get paid the same amount no matter what people—what illness people have. The point you’re saying is, look, some people use more healthcare resources.

And there would be a reason for the insurance company not to cover them. We take care of that by what is called risk adjustment. That is the national health board, when they give money to the insurance company to cover a person, pays extra for sicker people, and less for healthy people. That eliminates the incentive for insurance companies to skim the cream, or drop the lemons.

BRANCACCIO: Cherry pick I believe is the term these people use.

DR. EMANUEL: Or that’s right. That’s another one.

BRANCACCIO: Well, let’s review some of the other advantages of the plan as you see it. So you wouldn’t have employers doing this.

DR. EMANUEL: Absolutely.

BRANCACCIO: Which would relieve some burden on America’s overburdened corporations.

DR. EMANUEL: Absolutely. I think—I think—some of the biggest supporters of this plan will be businesses. They want—their employees to have insurance, but the costs are becoming too high, too astronomical for them.

So they would get out of the game entirely. And I think that’s a good thing. One of the benefits for employees would be they would probably see their wages go up. ‘Cause, right now, employers—are playing whatever it is, ten, 15 percent, of—of their labor cost to health insurance. That money would be, if the economists are right, transferred as increases in wages.

BRANCACCIO: Not just a shareholder value?

DR. EMANUEL: Well, it might go to shareholder value. But, again, they’re going to have to compete for workers. And it probably—I mean the economists think it would go—predominantly to—workers in—increase in wages. So that would be a benefit.

BRANCACCIO: Now if I can speak for the—two million suspicious people watching us right now, when you talk about a basic package of—

DR. EMANUEL: Right.

BRANCACCIO: —medical coverage, what are you talking about? Are you talking about—the most advanced cancer care? Or what are you talking about?

DR. EMANUEL: You would probably get the same plan you have now as a basic benefits plan. Look at what the average employer is providing to their employee today. Take that premium and multiply it times all Americans. And how much does that come out?

BRANCACCIO: I thought a component of this was an added tax. What the Europeans call value added tax, sales tax, sort of.

DR. EMANUEL: Right. Well, if the states aren’t paying Medicaid anymore, and employers aren’t paying for insurance, we would have to find the money to pay for this. We wouldn’t add more money, but we’d—you’d have to get basically—recoup somehow how employers are paying for it and how the states are paying for Medicaid. And that would be—we’ve proposed to finance this by a value added tax.

That means that, when you buy something, the added value is taxed. The tax would be about eight to ten of purchases—if you eliminate food and some other items that—poor people disproportionately buy. And, again—it—you’re going to have to pay for this somehow. It is going to be a tax.

BRANCACCIO: This seems a little shocking if you add the ten percent to the nine percent sales tax they’re already charging in California. Nineteen percent sales tax.

DR. EMANUEL: Well, but—remember what you get for that. So—your wages should increase—because you’re no longer paying—your employer is no longer paying for you health insurance, and should transfer that money to your salary increase. And there is this benefit of guaranteed healthcare. The overall—and your—by the way, your state taxes should go down if Medicaid is no longer part of the state—budget demand. So all of those things—should—we’re not demanding any more money devoted to healthcare. We’re just shifting how we get it.

BRANCACCIO: But still insurance companies there in the middle. They’re sort of—I love insurance companies as much as the next guy. But they’re kind of middle men. And there have been arguments by health—policy experts—

DR. EMANUEL: Right.

BRANCACCIO: That they’re kind of noise in the system.

DR. EMANUEL: One of the things that I think is important going forward, to make healthcare more efficient, and to get continuity of coverage better—is to have vertically integrated health plans.

Where your doctor works with the hospital, works with the pharmacy. Works with the home health aid. Works with skilled nursing facilities. So that you’re not sort of picking and choosing in the—in the whole system is just broken into parts.

That does require someone to vertically integrate health plans, health insurance companies. Where we would change from the current system—is the following. Right now in America there are about 1,300 health insurance companies. Many of them very small niche players. They cater to very small companies, but they add a lot of administrative costs —in the sense of they’ve got a different billing system. And so people have to keep up with that. In our plan, we would estimate that we would cut that down to about 50 or 60 plans throughout the country.

BRANCACCIO: You’d also get rid of those insurance companies, and there are some, who only like to insure people who will never get sick.

DR. EMANUEL: Absolutely. You can—in—again, in this proposal you’d have to take whoever walks through the door.

BRANCACCIO: Is it not troublesome to you that, under your plan, a wealthy person could buy some really “souped” up coverage that a poorer person could not get access to. There’d be this basic inequality.

DR. EMANUEL: You don’t think that happens now? From a practical standpoint, the rich can always buy. It seems to me the ethical question, the question of justice, is are people getting a good basic benefits package? And is—the—is everyone getting that?

It is not required, I don’t think, from an ethical standpoint, from a matter of justice, for that government to provide everything that could possibly be—be done for everybody in the country. We would go bankrupt.

BRANCACCIO: You think Republicans and Democrats could embrace a voucher plan? Of the sort that you’re discussing?

DR. EMANUEL: I think so. And I’ll say why. I think for the Democrats—the universality. The fact that everyone’s in the system. Everyone gets the same basic benefits package, is appealing

I think Republicans, I think what they want to be sure is, it’s not a—big government entitlement with no—with unlimited—budgets like Medicare. They want to make sure that Americans get choice. That we retain a private delivery system.

We have all of those in the voucher program. So I think the universal part appeals to the Democrats. The voucher part appeals to Republicans. And I think it should make us one big happy family. And we should just pass it.

The boys were totally into it.