Still Radioactive But OK to Drive Thru McDonald's

Today I'm OK to:
1. go through a drive-through as long as I don't spit or pee on the order taker/food hander-over-er or spit or pee on my hand before I give them the money and grab their hands and arms as they reach out to me and then force them to put their tainted hands and arms in their own mouths... see where I'm going with this?
2. walk by someone as long as I don't linger or sit 3 feet away from them for 3 hours...
3. sit on a couch 6 feet away from someone for a while, etc.

So I'm not sure what I'll/we'll wind up doing tomorrow. Saturday and Sunday should be interesting. We can spend time together as a family, but not completely. It’s a weird situation. Thanks for nothin’, thyroid cancer!

I could theoretically hug Jack loosely for a second on Sunday but can't give him a bear hug (with my neck close to his neck) for another few days. I'm having my scan on Wednesday (sorry if I already said this; I'm probably repeating myself), and after that, they'll see what lights up. I can't wait to find out because I have a theory that the "linear uptake" on the WBS I had in April was radioactive saliva coating my esophagus (I think I was so nervous and afraid to move and ruin the scan that I wasn't swallowing), and didn't truly represent thyca cells, which jibes with the lack of ultrasound findings of any tumor, mass, lesion, etc., when they tried to biopsy something. In other words, it won't surprise me if:
1. there's no uptake in my neck but maybe somewhere else; I'll sound paranoid and like a big fat hypochondriac when I commit this to paper, but on Monday I woke up in the middle of the night, and I swore I felt something happening in my right lung, the upper center of my chest and under my right ear. I had to take Advil for some weird pains.
2. there is uptake in my neck or neck region but it shows up somewhere other than the location of the previous uptake
3. there appears to be no uptake at all. It happens.

It's science, but it's not foolproof. This I've learned from spending hours and hours and hours reading about scans and Tg bloodwork and other thyca patients' experiences with these diagnostic tools.

Speaking of diagnostic tools, I AM ONE! And you can quote me on that. I've become the world's biggest thyroid cancer nerd.

Back to being sprung: It's a process of being sprung. After 14 days, I’m OK to do everything. That’s when life can return to normal.

I’ll write tomorrow to document how this family deals with the fact that I am partially poisonous.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Well, when you’re partially poisonous, it pays to think of the glass as being half full—of poison, that is.

I just don’t feel right when I leave the bedroom. When Pommy and Jack are gone at school and work or somewhere else, I feel OK about being “OUT,” but otherwise, I feel weird and wrong about being in the other parts of the house. So I spent most of the day in the bedroom again today.

They did go to Boomer’s and Living Spaces for a while, and when they were out I did some laundry and spent a few minutes in the kitchen putting their dishes in the dishwasher, but other than that, I feel a sense of calm when I return to the radioactive area.

Mentally and emotionally, I sort of hit a wall today. By the time they returned from Boomer’s and Living Spaces, I was just so sick of being in this room and being near them but not being able to touch them that I was feeling very frustrated and well, man, like I was going crazy. It got a little “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in my mind tonight.

I went outside where they were playing basketball and I decided that if I took Taco for a walk and she stayed at the end of a 6-foot leash, that was safe, so I got Taco ready to go and then Jack said he wanted to come with us on his bike, so that was a nice little addition. We walked for a while; I tried to go a route that wouldn’t take us near any neighbors we know well enough to say more than “Hi” to. It was a nice walk except for the fact that Jack went through a puddle and fell off his bike and into the puddle and I couldn’t hug him.

I hated that.

When we got home, I returned to the bedroom and cried. But not for long, because the second I started crying, I realized that radioactive tears are just as much of a contaminant as radioactive saliva, mucous, pee and perspiration. Bodily fluids, one and all. So I dried my face and kept the tears confined to several pieces of toilet paper, which I flushed down the toilet. Then I washed my hands. Even crying needs to be carefully controlled when you’re radioactive.

I was also getting pretty nauseous by the time we returned from the short walk, and I felt wiped out in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. My body just feels so thoroughly weak. I felt out of breath and out of energy. I know I need to hang in there.

My prayer tonight is this: Dear Lord, give me the endurance and the strength to remain positive and upbeat until this is over and I can hug and kiss my family again and have Taco on my lap for hours on end and pet Brandy’s big, beautiful, honey-colored head. Give me the patience to know and accept the fact that it’s going to take time to regain my strength. That it just doesn’t happen overnight. Amen.