Fire in the Hole!

It's a done deal. Had a quick blood test at Kaiser this morning and then headed to Northside Hospital. It seems just like the other day that I was walking OUT their doors from being discharged. I wandered through the surgery waiting area and saw all those people gathered. I couldn't help but think about Dana and her mom doing 10-hours there back in May.

I was sent to Radiology and ushered to the "Hot Room." There could have not been any more RADIOACTIVE signage and lead this and that. I had to fill out a ton of forms and talk to the Radiologist. Turns out that I am getting a pretty high dosage of Radioiodine and will need to take precautions for 4-days instead of the normal 3-days. After the three days I can be in the same room as other people, but I still need to be isolated to sleep, eat and bathroom stuff. Just to be safe, I think I am going to do the 4-days in the basement and emerge Sunday afternoon to go out for a nice dinner.

Our family was planning to travel back to Louisiana next week for vacation. I asked the Radiologist about the trip and he said that 8-hours in the car was too much exposure for other people. Even though this is five days out and I will be done secreting radioiodine, there is no way to know how much thyroid tissue is still in my body - and whatever tissue is still around will be radioactive. It will be OK to go back to work on Monday (as long as I am not sitting next to anyone for 8-hours straight).

I promised some of the guys back at the office to describe the pill deal. They pulled a lead jar from a lead-lined drawer. They broke the plastic seal on the lead jar, opened it and pulled a plastic pill bottle from inside. They then stuck the pill bottle into a device that measured and verified the radioactivity. By the way, the guy handling the pills stood behind a lead shield they whole time. He then quickly handed the pill bottle to me and had me quickly dump the two pills into my mouth and swallow them with a cup of water. The guy then immediately escorted me to the hospital exit (using the back way). I then drove home.

On Monday, July 9th, I return to Northside Hospital for my Nuclear Scan. They use a special camera/scanner that will detect the radioactive tissue in my body. They expect to see some hot spots in my neck from where the thyroid was removed. But they are also looking from head to toe to see if any of those cells have traveled and made home elsewhere. From what I understand, this first scan will be a baseline and we will keep scanning and killing cells until they are all gone. So needless to say, I am a little anxious to find out if the cancerous thyroid cells were just localized to the neck area, or in other places. Regardless, we should be able to see them and zap them as we move forward.

At this point I have done 4-hours out of the 96 in the basement. It's not too bad. I am watching afternoon baseball (Astros vs Brewers) on TV and Dana just left a Firehouse Sub at the foot of the door for me. The mouse for the computer is in a Ziploc bag (yes, it works in the bag) and I am using an old Packard Bell keyboard from our very first computer (that I will finally throw away after this) to type. I now remember why we replaced it. Every now and then I press a key for ONE letter and get wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

So far, so good. No physical or mental side effects. I will keep you posted.

Jeff