You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby!

Four years.  Four years.

It’s been exactly four years since I took my I-131 radioactive iodine treatment for my papillary thyroid cancer. My oh my, how my life has changed since then!

I’d like to say I haven’t given cancer another thought since that day, but truth is, I think about it every day. Every morning I wake up and take my thyroid replacement pill first thing and wait an hour before eating or drinking anything that might affect the absorption.  During my pregnancy my daily dose was changed 5 times to meet the increasing demands from my body and from Maddie. Since her birth 2 months ago, my dose has been changed twice as my body readjusts to my “new normal.” Without this one little daily pill, I would slowly go more and more hypothyroid and eventually my mind and body would shut down.  I would be so screwed in a zombie apocalypse scenario.

I have just one more year until I can say I’ve been cancer free for the magical five years = cured mark.  In this upcoming year, I have plans to undergo a whole body scan once my daughter is weaned.  Once again I will have to go hypo on purpose.  Once again I will have to take some RAI and go into isolation for a short time – this time from my husband and daughter – to protect them from my radioactive self.  Hopefully this time nothing shows up on the scan in my thyroid bed or in my lungs.

If I think on it too long, it terrifies me. So I try not to let my mind go there.  I have a long life ahead of me – including seeing my great-grandkids grow up – and I'm positive there are many adventures awaiting me!

One Advantage

Hearing all the reports of the radiation worries in Japan lately makes my heart go out to the people there.  The country is already devastated from the damage caused by the earthquake on March 11.  Now those poor people have to worry about their water and food and even the air…

I’ve been reading the news reports and thinking how bizarre it is that the radiation that is causing all the hubbub is the very same stuff that I had to ingest in quite a large and concentrated quantity just 17 months ago.  The very same radioactive isotope used as the treatment for thyroid cancer also causes thyroid cancer. 

I have first hand knowledge of what can happen if you ingest this isotope in high doses. I won’t recount all the dirty details of just exactly what did happen in this post but if you are interested you can read about it here, here, or here. 

After going through all of that and having every last thyroid cell radioactively burned out of my body, its nice to know that there is at least one thing I won’t have to worry about should a nuclear disaster happen nearby.