finally feeling more human

Well, here I am finally. My treatment did not go as I had anticipated. I went in at 10:15 am on Friday morning (the 10th). I had to stop by the lab first to have a pregnancy test, standard procedure. Then I got to sit around the waiting room in radiology for about an hour. Finally they came out and took me back to Nuclear Med. My Endo was there along with the nuclear med. tech and a nurse. They had me sign a sheet saying I wasn't pregnant but that I released them from all liability if I was. Then they went over my list of "rules" and had me sign a copy of that as well as signing an authorization for treatment form. They verified my dosage which was just over 200 millicurries. Actually it's a pretty high dose, had it been 220 I would've been hospitalized for 24-72 hours but I opted to go ahead and go home. They asked if I had any questions and after that my Endo left and the nurse came hefting a small but clearly heavy lead container. She sat it in front of me and opened it then she told me to remove the plastic container inside and shoot the pill like a shot and put the lid back on and stick it back in the lead container. While I did this she stood back across the room from me. At least she wasn't decked out in the space suit to hand it to me like I hear that they used to do. After that I was free to go. I wasn't allowed to eat for 4 hours prior to the dose and had to wait for 2 hours afterwards but I was told to immediately begin sucking on lemon drops to encourage my salivary glands to keep working. I was also told that should I vomit within the next two hours to call them so they could send Haz. Mat. out for clean up. Good stuff.
I felt pretty okay for the next few hours but still needed to stay on my LID for the next 24 hours so I went home and grabbed my special food and went on to my dad's house to settle in. I grabbed a snack and went to sleep. I woke up around 6:30 pm and cooked myself some dinner which was awkward because I tried not to touch food that didn't belong to me and I had to eat on a disposable plate with disposable silverware. My dad was disappointed that he still had to cook his own food. Then I decided that my allergies couldn't abide by all the dust and mouse shit in my bedroom so I started cleaning and then I started packing all his crap up so he can know that it is time to get out of my house.
Then Saturday came and I just kept sleeping and sleeping. I was only awake for a few hours. Sunday I woke up around 1:30pm and only because my dad wanted me to help him go buy a new used truck since he just wrecked his the week before. We went by my mom's house so he could borrow the money from her and I to go back to sleep while she took him to go get the truck. That's when the real fun started. I just kept sleeping and when I was awake I was nauseous. My mom decided that I should take a laxative. Okay, here I'm going to stop and apologize in advance to anyone who is against TMI and do my best to be vague but informative. I have a history of being prone to constipation. I was actually supposed to have a colonoscopy back in May to remove some polyps but then this cancer thing came along. So here I am, extrememly hypothyroid which also makes you constipated. I was leery about the laxative because I tend to have painful cramping that sometimes results in vomiting and near-fainting when I try to "force" the issue. I don't know if what happened next was 100% the laxative but I suspect it mostly was. I began having horrible cramping and then started sweating and feeling faint and vomiting and could hardly set up. I got so weak and in such pain that I decided to go to the ER. They gave me an IV with anti-nausea medicine and saline for hydration. They also discovered that I had a urinary tract infection so after awhile they finally sent me home, which was now my mom's house because I needed more people around to help me and I didn't want my dad to have to take off of work. Plus when you feel like crap you really just want your mommy, don't you? I then pretty much slept for the next 3 days while my mom nagged me that I needed to get up and drink more water to get the radiation out as fast as possible. By Wednesday I finally felt well enough to stay awake for at least several hours and I missed my boys terribly so I went to the hospital and had them wave the magic wand over me (geiger counter) to make sure I wasn't too radioactive for my boys. They said as long as I didn't have them sitting on me for more than about 20 minutes at a time and I slept alone that they should be okay. So I finally came home and for the rest of the week my family still came over to help with the boys and let me sleep uninterrupted. Now here I am almost a week later and I'm finally getting over my hypothyroidism, slowly but surely. It takes about 6-8 weeks to get my levels back up but I feel much better. The most troublesome side effect that I have at this point is the fact that I can't taste anything. Apparently, this isn't real common but has been noted on a few message boards to have happened and it seems to last a couple of weeks. It's like I cooked a hamburger and let the grease cool and coagulate and then licked it. I have this constant feeling of a thick coating of grease on my tongue that I can't taste through. If I happen to eat anything greasy it's god-awful. If it keeps up I could actually lose some weight which I'd love. I haven't eaten any chocolate because what's the point, I can't taste it. I've been very fortunate to have several people bring food for my family and I so I haven't had to really cook dinner since I've been home. It's nice to not have to worry if someone is a bad cook too because nothing really tastes like anything to me. I know this post is a little long and for that I apologize but it has been awhile and is likely to be awhile before I get around to posting again. So I'll leave you with this little nugget. I've gained 10 pounds since going hypothyroid for my treatment. Last night before bed while waiting on his bedtime stories, Owen was laying in MY bed on MY pillow when he pipes up in a really whiny voice, "Mom, you keep getting fatter and pushing me off of the pillow." Yes I did indeed birthe such a creature.

Time to Glow

I am so relieved. My levels are finally where they need to be and I will have my radiation on Friday around noon. I am not having a dose quite high enough to be hospitalized but I'll be staying with my dad for about a week, maybe more maybe less depending on how radioactive I am. I don't want to take any chances with the kids. It's going to be really hard to be away from them for more than a couple of days but I couldn't live with myself if I thought it was going to do any long term harm to them. Kids and pets are more susceptible to ill effects of radiation. They say that for two weeks following a dose that you should pretend you have strep throat and refrain from kissing or sharing drinks, foods, etc. with others. If I wash or handle other peoples eating utensils or food I should wear gloves. Radiation is primarily excreted through saliva, urine, and sweat. If I do come home sooner than two weeks I will have to sleep in the extra bedroom alone until the two weeks is up. I will be relieved to get this all over with! Especially this restrictive diet. I've been hypothyroid for the past three weeks so that's a lot of the reason I haven't posted on here, sorry to leave anyone hanging on what was going on but I've just been too exhausted. I've had lots of ideas for posts just no energy. Hopefully I'll be able to post a little more next week but my dad doesn't have internet at his house so I'll take the laptop and if I get lucky I'll maybe catch a signal off a neighbor or something. I also might go down to the library or something to post. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers!

I hate Rain

This weather is making me miserable. It just keeps raining and raining. I think I have SAD. I have been feeling very overwhelmed and depressed lately and it can't just be the weather. I don't trust or necessarily like my Endo. I told him that I wanted to have a high enough dose of RAI to be hospitalized so that I wouldn't have to be around my children and unneccessarily expose them to radiation and because I want to be aggressive with this disease. He said I'd have to have a dose of 250 millicurries in order to be hospitalized but he wouldn't mind giving me a 300 dose. I said fine and planned to start my LID on Monday the 15th. Now the more I research and correspond with Dr. Ain (the thyroid specialist in Kentucky) I don't think I should have that high of a dose because it's dangerous for your bone marrow and kidneys. There's something called a dosimetry study that gives a patient a small tracer dose of the radioactive iodine while the patient is on the LID and for five days the patient has blood and urine tests and the nuclear medicine department computes it all and comes up with the maximum safe dose for each individual patient. Well the catch is that hardly any institutions offer this dosimetry and if they do it usually isn't covered by insurance. So I really really want to do my therapy using that technique but I also want to hurry up and get my treatment over with before all the holidays roll around. So I may have to travel after all and I may have to find a new doctor. Whatever I do I'm determined to do this year though because all of my co-insurance and deductibles are met so I'm done with out-of-pocket costs.
On another note, I'm coming down with something because I can't stop coughing and my lungs feel like they're covered in mucous. I have absolutely no energy and tons of stuff to take care of. I need some kind of help but I hate asking. David did say he'd start taking over household cleaning for awhile but he has yet to start and no one but me can really prepare food for the low-iodine diet because I'm so picky and I have the cookbook anyway. I don't know what I need so just pray for me please. Thanks

My new profile pic

Do you like my new profile pic? It's my cat, Julie. I can never seem to find a picture of myself that I like and I think my cat is pretty so there ya go. We went to visit my grandpa over Labor Day weekend. He lives in Arkansas near Bull Shoals Lake. He has a barn full of wild cats. Last month when I was down there one of the momma cats just had kittens who barely had their eyes open. Since then both my grandpa and his neighbor have had kittens that have all been dying. So this last weekend when I went back there was only one left so I took him before he could meet the same fate as his siblings. So I got him to the vet and she says he's probably only 5 or 6 weeks old and was flea, mite, and tick ridden. She said his little body was covered in bruises probably due to being anemic from all the bug bites. She said he was severely underweight, weighing almost 1 pound. So that just reinforced how happy I was to have saved him. The boys love him and Owen named him Ghost Rider. Owen is a big-time Johnny Cash fan. How many 4 year olds can sing all the words to Ring of Fire, Walk the Line, and Ghost Rider? Maybe not the most appropriate choice of music on my part but hey he knows Old McDonald too. I had to back off a little bit of Mr. Cash when I heard my son singing, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." That wasn't cool. Bad Mommy. At least I can still listen to whatever I want when it's just Parker and me- for now.

Finally getting to it

So I finally got the go-ahead from my doctor to start my low-iodine diet and stop taking my cytomel. I will do this for approximately 3 weeks or until my TSH level is adequate. I'll be at the lab once a week until my level is where it needs to be. However, as much as I've been waiting to get all this crap over with I'm going to wait until the 15th to start because my husbands' birthday is coming up and so is my friend Anna's wedding. I do not want to be on the LID during those times. I went on the diet for a week a couple of weeks ago to practice and also to see if it made any difference in my iodine levels for my 24 hr. urine test. I don't trust those tests now because before when I did the 24 hr. urine test without changing my diet my levels were actually lower! The doctor didn't really know what to make of that. The recipes were actually pretty good, unfortunately I'm kind of a picky eater and so I'll be eating the same thing quite a bit. I made my own peanut butter, salsa, italian dressing, tomato sauce, and breads. I didn't dislike anything I tried but it was a lot of work. I'll be prepping everything I can ahead of time since I'll be hypothyroid this time around and likely be even more exhausted than I already am. I feel bad about not blogging more often but I really am tired ALL the time and I've been out of town 2 of the last 4 weekends. Owen just went back to preschool so that might give me a little more time but who knows how I'll use that time. I've also been a little depressed lately but my Endo says it's probably due to the same reasons as the fatigue which is that cytomel is only T3 hormone whereas a normal thyroid makes both T3 & T4. I can't get the synthetic T4 until my radiation therapy is completed. So that's about all for now.

Kicking Dad Out

This post has nothing to do with cancer. Many of you know that the first house we bought was in Bonner Springs and that my dad lived there with us. When we moved to this house we left him there. Well, times are tough and we're broke so we're going to sell the Bonner house. Hopefully it'll sell in this jacked up market. Have you ever tried to get your unemployed drunkard father out of your house? No? Really? Well let me enlighten you. It isn't easy. He hasn't paid rent since May and I use the term paid loosely. He took a lump sum for his retirement and I kept all the money in an account and doled it out to him and took his rent out of that. That money ran out in May and ever since then I've been telling him he needed to find another place to live because we couldn't afford to pay both mortgages. So here we are in August and I finally made my husband call him and tell him to get out after my "firm" deadline of July 31st has come and gone because he obviously isn't listening to me. I could probably write an entire book about my dad's unique persona but I might vomit if I do. I once made him a t-shirt that sums him up pretty well: Victim of Circumstance. You see, nothing is ever his fault. I'll admit his life hasn't been easy; his mother left him and his seven brothers and sisters when he, the oldest, was thirteen. The good-paying factory job he worked at on and off for 20 years basically poisoned him and has left him chronically ill. However, he's had opportunities too that he's pissed off. If he hadn't been laying around drunk so much maybe he'd have a job by now or more importantly if he'd simply filled out papers timely and made a few phone calls he could probably be on disability right now and not be causing my husband and I great anxiety over when we'll ever get him out of our house. So if any of you kind readers out there would like a 57 year old drunken Jehovah's Witness to take in for a charity along with his three big black dogs give me a call.

still waiting...

well, I really have been lazy about blogging. It's just that days go by so fast and I have to feed my kids and sleep and clean my house and go to the pool, etc. etc. Plus it just doesn't seem like I have any new news to report. However, I did re-read my last post and realized that I hadn't shared the results of my last F.N.A. It looks okay, they say. So now I just need to get the results of my last 24-hr urine test and then I see my Endo on Aug. 7th.
I don't know that I've enlightened the readers of this blog on the 24-hr urine test. See, back in April when all was well and no one thought I had cancer my surgeon had a CT with contrast performed on me. Well, the contrast that is used would affect my radioactive iodine treatment by making it less effective so I have to make sure it's all out of my system before I can take my radioactive pill. It can stay in your body for 2-12 months so I have to periodically do a test where every drop of pee for one whole day has to be kept in a jug that must be refrigerated and then sent to a lab. So basically this is all I'm waiting on to start my treatment. I am not looking forward to having to be away from my kids for around two weeks once I have this treatment but I don't want them to get cancer either so I'd just as soon get this all over with. I'll have to go in and have my levels checked often to see what my levels of radioactivity are before I go home to my kids. My sister-in-law has kindly agreed to let me stay at her house while I emanate radioactive vibes. At least I can catch up on my scrapbooking! I'll try and be better about posting but I can't promise anything.