Radioactive

            Two years ago I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  That’s a whole different post in and of itself but you need to know that to understand this one.  Part of the treatment involved in thyroid cancer includes something called “Radioactive Iodine.”  The first time around, I failed to see any humor at all in the situation for obvious reasons.  Now, two years out, they told me I would need a follow-up scan every year for five years that would require another dose of radioactive iodine.  The follow-up scans are just as scary, in my opinion, as the first one.  You’ve put cancer in the back of your mind, hoping it's gone and that it’s never coming back and now you face a test that, again, could turn your world upside down.  However, this time around, finding some humor in the situation was a little easier and might be what pulled me through the whole ordeal without me going completely crazy. 

           The first thing they did was make me stop my thyroid medication because they needed me to be extremely hypothyroid.  If you don’t know what that means, I both envy you and hate you because you will probably never understand what it feels like to slowly lose your mind.  And I don’t mean small things like forgetting where you put your keys.  I mean things like putting my garbage in the refrigerator and giving dog food to the turtle.  Yes, that actually happened.  That was before putting empty cans of green beans in the pantry and forgetting why I went to the grocery store.  No, I don’t mean forgetting my list or forgetting what I meant to buy, I mean seriously forgetting why I was at the grocery store or how I got there.  I’ve always been somewhat flaky but this was beyond crazy, even for me.  Nothing made sense to me anymore and the smallest tasks took so much focus and energy.  I now understand how my mom feels every time she turns on her computer.

            The second thing they did was put me on a low-iodine diet.  If you want to lose weight, I highly recommend this diet because the food, well, sucks.  Every day for breakfast I had a little slice of cardboard followed by Styrofoam peanuts for lunch and then the glorious 6 ounces of meat I was allowed to have once a day for dinner.  Everyone told me it was only for two weeks and it couldn’t be that bad.  Well, I invite my smoking friends to cut out smoking, my drinking friends to cut out alcohol, and every female on the planet to cut out chocolate for two weeks.  If you love food as much as I do, this diet is a special little slice of hell. 

            Then comes the actual radiation dose.  I walked into the nuclear medicine department at the hospital which is behind very large, heavy wooden doors with “Caution” written in bright red across them.  You know those horror movies where the girl runs upstairs instead of down?  That’s what I felt like at this moment.  Sure, let’s walk through the doors with the enormous caution sign.  What could possibly go wrong?  Luckily, Jason is not standing there in a hockey mask as I expected.  Instead, they take me into a room where I wait, by myself, completely isolated from other patients.  The nurse enters the room dressed in a Hazmat suit holding a container made of lead.  I’m not kidding.  I start looking around for the hazmat suit that they surely meant to give me but I didn’t see when I walked in.  When one didn’t appear, I then started looking around for hidden cameras.  You have got to be kidding me.  So, with her massive gloves protecting her from the medicine she wants me to put into my body, she opens the lead container and reveals a pill in a glass jar.  Through her mask and what I now presume was a Darth Vader voice changer, she tells me to go ahead and take my pill.  I look at her like a deer and headlights and squeak out, “Are you sure…… this is safe???”  “Oh yes, dear, we have to wear this suit for our protection because we are around it all the time.”  Not an entirely comforting answer but I decide it’s an acceptable one.  I start to dump the pill from the container into my hand when I hear, “STOP!!!”  There it is.  They are messing with me, I knew it.  Darth Vader speaks again, “Do not put it in your hand, take it straight out of the container, please.”  Seriously? Now I can’t help but laugh a little deliriously at the creature standing before me in her space gear.  I can’t touch it, but I can swallow it.  How does she not see the irony in this?  But, like a good little girl, I do as I am told and take my pill.  She tells me to expect some nausea and fatigue and sends me on my way with instructions to return two days later for my scan.

            The scan is the scary part.  This is where I find out whether or not the cancer has returned.  I calm myself down by trying to find ways to laugh at the situation and I think about the first time I went through this.  When I had my first dose, my only little ray of sunshine was hoping that this radioactive medicine would give me superpowers.  Maybe I would grow four more appendages and have the ability to smack six annoying people at one time.  Or possibly I would gain the ability to read people’s thoughts in little bubbles above their heads.  No such luck.  But I was also very sick then.  Superheroes can’t be sick.  Maybe that was the issue.  Surely, this time around I would gain some sort of benefits from the radiation.  That thought provided me with enough entertainment to get me through my scan.  I did learn, however, that they have microphones in the room when I heard laughter coming from their safe room as I hummed the theme from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as I entered the scanner.  Go ahead….laugh minions….hide behind the protection of your 6-inch glass in your radiation free cubicle.  You will be my first victims of whatever powers I obtain!!!    

            They then move me to the second scanner and ask me to lie on a table that was clearly built for someone of Kate Moss’s stature.  They rubber band my feet together, tuck my arms into a blanket and large plastic arm holder thingies (I think that is the official medical term) and give me a pillow that forces my head to hang backwards at an angle that I’m sure will do permanent damage to my spine.  She then tells me to feel free to take a little nap if I’d like.  Lady, I can barely swallow in this position, suddenly have the urge to itch my nose, have one butt cheek hanging off of this table, and if I sneeze wrong, I’m sure the other will follow.  Not exactly a day at the spa.  Just scan me and shut up.    

            After two hours, my scans are over and I’m told I can go eat while I wait for my results.  “Can the food contain iodine?”  “No, not yet.”  I sit in my chair and pout as I pull out an apple and look at it with disgust but start to nibble on it anyway because the lack of nourishment is starting to affect my brain and I truly can’t afford any more damage.  Luckily it doesn’t take long for the doctor to come out and tell me that my scan is clean.  No cancer.  Relief sweeps over me and I’m not entirely sure if it’s because of the cancer-free news or the knowledge that I can now go demolish an entire pizza by myself.  But nevertheless, I walk out of the hospital with a huge smile on my face.  I’ll admit that I was still a little disappointed that no superpowers had shown up.  I came home and played with my pet turtle in hopes that, at the very least, I had enough radiation in my body to pass on to him and maybe, just maybe, I would come downstairs the next morning to find a crime-fighting ninja in my fish tank.  I’ll keep you posted.