Why Would Anyone Eat a Whole Lemon?

I’m on my way to Hoag Hospital to get my whole body scan after my radioactive iodine treatment #2 last Monday, June 8, and I just ate an entire lemon. Something I thought I would never do, and something—to be quite honest, once I took the first bite—I didn’t think I could do. But as I was eating it, and as my salivary glands were getting used to the sourness, all I could think was “People with other cancers endure far worse for their treatments. Far worse. FAR WORSE! I started picturing women--with no hair, bad women, women with wigs, women with bandanas or scarves over their heads--and I instantly got humbled. Nd I ate the rest of the lemon, and by the end of it, it wasn’t that bad.

The whole idea behind eating a whole lemon an hour before your scan is to stimulate your salivary glands and rinse your mouth out with waster every 10 minutes after the lemon to rid your esophagus of a coating of radioactive saliva so there won’t be any sites of uptake on the scan that appear to be thyroid cancer cells but are actually just radioactive saliva pooled in your esophagus. Anyway, it’s a tip from one of the thyroid cancer expert who I’ve located online, and I hope it works.

My prayer right now is “Dear Lord, give me the peace and the ability to breathe in and out, in and out, to get through the scan without getting all worked up and worried, to keep my headache away—because I’ve had a terrible headache sort of a neck ache/headache combo on the right side sort of coming from behind the right side of my neck, up the right side of my neck into the right side of my head. Lord, just let me keep that headache away, and remind me to breathe in and out. Lord, I pray that this scan will be definitive one way or the other—whatever the outcome, I pray that it would be definitive, that there wouldn’t be questions. Lord, I thank you, also, for your faithfulness through this entire thing, for being there for me in the way that only You can be, for basically being m,y everything and being the one thing I know I can lean on and trust and depend on and get comfort from. Thank you, Lord, for everything you do for me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

For some reason, as I’m getting closer to Hoag, I’m thinking about the fact that I am trying new things now more impulsively. For instance—and this may be a bizarre example, but it is what it is—I opened up one of my recipe books on Sunday night (something I don’t do very frequently), and I picked out a recipe that calls for white wine, and in the past I would have instantly ruled that out (“I’m not making a recipe with white wine”). I’m not sure exactly why—just a knee-jerk reaction saying I don’;t want to have a bottle of wine around the house. But I know plenty of people who don’t drink and have a bottle of wine around the house for cooking , and it’s not a problem. In the past, I would have said no, I’m not making this recipe., or I would have made it without the white wine. Yesterday I was in the grocery store, and I wound up buying a bottle, and I feel like I;’m stashing some kind of illegal contraband in my house. I put it on a shelf that’s kind of out of reach, laid the bottle down on its side. But anyway, I have this bottle of white wine in my house and I’m planning on making this Rachel Ray pasta carbonara recipe using the wine, but I feel very weird about having it in the house. At the same time, I’m proud of myself for trying something new, going out on a limb, “investing” in a bottle of white wine which was only $8—the cheapest bottle of white wine I could find.

This is a long, drawn-out story to illustrate the point of me doing more stuff, maybe taking more risks, as if buying a bottle of white wine is a risk…I was standing in the store appreciating the cute label, I felt kind of guilty and weird about it and wondered if I was going to get it home and drink it. Not the whole thing, mind you, but I just wondered if I was going to have a glass of wine, and I didn’t want to , but I thought, “Am I going to be able to handle having this around?” Well certainly I am.

After the scan(s):

Cute things happen all the time, and we just forget to think about them. I’m on the 55 Freeway after my scan at Hoag, and a chartreuse Volkswagen Bug just drove by in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and in the passenger seat was a cute little Asian gal wearing white-rimmed sunglasses who had two teeny tiny chihuahuas on her lap, and when I drove by her and I looked out my window and smiled and mouthed the words, “How cute,” she made one of the chihuahuas wave at me with its tiny, delicate left paw. How cute is that? It’s stuff like that that makes life worth living.

The results of my scan was that there was uptake in my neck exactly where we thought there would be, no uptake anywhere else, which is a relief, because I had been in a very paranoid fashion thinking I had felt something in my right lung.

The radiologist sat down with me and looked over the scans with me, and basically gave me the results, and if that’s not God, I don’t know what is. They’ve told me in the past at Hoag that they don’;t do that, so I prayed for that, and it happened, and I am so glad. Now I don’t have to wait a week to find out where there was uptake, and was it normal,. Blah blah blah. Anyway, I’m very relieved and super happy that Dr. Wong took the time to go over my results with me. Another piece of evidence that God is awesome.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 9:41 pm

Hi, all.

Just wanted to send an update on my journey.

I had my second radioactive iodine treatment last Monday and my follow-up whole-body scans today, which shows where the iodine was "taken up" and where it is presumably killing thyroid cancer cells. (You go, radioactive iodine!) The radiologist, who is a nuclear medicine doctor, sat down with me after the scans and went over my pictures with me--basically giving me the results of the scans right away. There was one area of uptake in my neck, as expected, and nothing else of note. Good news. It means the radioactive iodine is working on killing the thyroid cells that are left over from the surgery and the first treatment. Kind of like mopping up the floor after sweeping.

I feel a tremendous sense of relief! My gut is telling me there's a very good chance this is the last treatment I'll have to have for this cancer, and that's such a joyous feeling. Even though I don't have my NED badge yet (No Evidence of Disease), I feel strongly that it's coming my way someday soon. There's no "cure" for thyroid cancer, but we thyroid cancer patients hope to hear we're "NED" one day--and then we hope to hang onto the NED label for the rest of our long, wonderful, blessed lives.

I will have some follow-up testing in 4-6 months to see how successful the treatment was. I'll let you know what happens then.

Thank you all for your support and prayers and help and offers of help and for caring.
God is good!

Love,
Lynn