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.