Did they say two weeks of Low-Iodine Diet?
It’s two weeks, plus the two days it takes for the Nuclear Medicine Department at my hospital to inject two doses of Thyrogen into me (via both of my butt cheeks... seriously, they poked one cheek a day... with very long, and very painful needles), the one day I actually take in my radioactive iodine pill, one more day of letting the iodine settle/burn through whatever cancer cells/remnants of it are still inside me, and then the day of the Full Body Scan itself.
I have not been able to eat any food that has salt, or milk, or seafood/or anything that has carageenan/algae for the past fifteen days. I’m only allowed egg whites, a cup of pasta, and a slice of bread a day; plus six ounces of meat daily, too. Or something like that.
For the past fifteen days.
I know I shouldn’t be so irritated about this. It’s for my own health, for God’s sake. But you know, I’ve been doing this for four years in a row now. The first two years I was absolutely fine with it. IT’S FOR MY HEALTH. I know the whole purpose of a low-iodine diet is to “starve” whatever cancer cells I have left in my body of iodine, so that when I take in the radioactive iodine pill, the cells are eager and “hungry” for iodine--that will freaking burn them away for good. Even knowing all of that, I was surly about having to go on the dreaded diet last year.
This year I actually yelled at my mother for eating pasta carbonara in front of me, and barely choked down my dinner of egg whites, rice, and veggienaise (...Mayonnaise without eggs, gluten-free and organic and vegan stuff. Actually quite good, but.. eh).
So I guess that’s my rant. People think thyroid cancer’s possibly the easiest cancer to survive, and they’re probably right. It doesn’t metastasize to other parts of your body for years (talking from experience. Family friends first realized what I had jokingly called my “Adam’s Apple” was actually an alarming lump years before my endocrinologist commanded me to get a biopsy on it; only then was it revealed that I had ten cancerous nodules in my thyroid). It’s easy to take out of your body. But...
Hell. The annual body scans, the lifelong dependence to Levothyroxine (I get withdrawal symptoms when I miss even one day of drinking my medicine), mood swings, shit metabolism, and my perpetually hypothyroid, easy-to-get-fatigued body... Man, it’s not so easy after all.
