It kind of seems like just yesterday and yet it kind of seems like forever ago that I was here preparing for my I-131 radioactive iodine treatment. In fact, it's been 1 year, 5 days, 21 hours, 2 minutes, and 40 seconds. Jeff started me an "atomic" clock last year. Mostly so that we would know where we were with isolation and the other parts of the whole being radioactive so we would know when it "should" be safe and not have worries of exposure to others.
I've been off my Synthyroid for the past 2 weeks. Need my TSH at 30 or above. I had blood work done last Friday and my TSH levels were 37.8. I had my scan appointments schedule for April 26 & 27, 2011. And it was confirmed that I was not pregnant (no surprise) I was cleared for "GO." Yea!
Leading up to this day the last couple of weeks as been a bit of a pain. The radiology guy, ugh, has driven me and my doctors office kind of nuts. The radiology place's "chart" for Synthyroid requires that the patient be off the medication for six weeks. Yes, SIX weeks. My doctor, two weeks. They check the TSH, if you haven't converted to 30 or above then, they wait another week and check again, and you just move your appointment. The radiology place, I don't know what lab rat they got their numbers from, but they want you to be in extreme withdrawal. For a lot of people the two weeks is torture enough, six weeks, ugh, one would almost die. The nurse even said the same things I did last time I talked to her. I guess that maybe skinny people take longer to convert from hyper to REALLY hypo. But good gawd, this guy, you would think that after a phone call to me, and a call to my doctor that it would be settled but no, I think I had a total of three-four calls with him and a few with my doctor.
Don't know how he wasn't understanding that my doctor said to stop taking my meds on X day, to have blood work done on X day, to schedule my scan anytime during the week of X. If the TSH # don't come back high enough, we move it. I guess it all really came down to ordering the capsules, he didn't want to order them if the test wasn't going to be done, but is this really any different than any other thyroid cancer patient? Could the caps not wait, do they have a limited shelf life of a few days? Who knows, and frankly at this point, who cares, my numbers were good and were a go.
I went into day and took my two I-123 capsules. They were two dark blue, long capsules. Stuck to my tongue yet again. I hate that. LOL They give you two laxative pills to take by 9 pm so that the capsule has a chance to get into your system yet can be kind of flushed out of the your system so as to not create a starburst effect in the can which can make the area that they are wanting to really see be diminished. I took them. I hate them. They do their job. I still hate them. LOL The only other 'bad' part is no dairy products. Sigh, I can live 24 hours without cow juice I guess...if I have too.
Part 2 - tomorrow
