The RAI Experience

Being told to go to your room use to be a punishment…. A punishment as kids we would hear pretty often!

Now as I am older I often thought of what it would be like to be “sent to your room” never really expecting to have it actually come to fruition.  Boy it is NOT what I imagined at all! (Well ok maybe the binge TV watching was)

One of the therapy treatments for thyroid cancer is to have what is called RAI- radioactive iodine.  It is administered in this BRIGHT blue pill (not too bad) then the patient is sent home or sequestered to a hospital room depending on the dose prescribed.  I am one of the lucky ones that got to do “my time” at home.

Before this actually happens though, let me paint a little picture for you so you can get a better understanding of what Thyroid Cancer patients go through in the days and weeks leading up to this.

We are put on what is called a LID(Low Iodine Diet) for again anywhere from 1-4 or sometimes even 6 weeks depending on how aggressive the treatment.  This means no Iodized salt of any kind.  Now you may think this isn’t too bad at first, but it gets better. NO dairy, NO seafood or anything that comes from the sea including himalayan salt( are you starting to see the picture), no egg yolks which then basically takes out most bakery items…… Yup you can pretty much kiss eating out goodbye.  Now the good news is that you can have certain things that you might not think possible like Oreos and Swedish fish, but did I mention that you are either off of your Thyroid meds completely during this time or about to get injected with something that is going to basically make any meds you are taking null and void so YUP you guessed it….. WEIGHT GAIN here it comes not to mention fatigue, irritability, aches and pains. yes we are truly a party host’s worst nightmare during this time.  Even the dog begins to look at you a little funny.

Get the picture??

So now we get our dose of RAI and we are sent off (alone as you can’t be within 6 ft or anyone) and if you are lucky enough like me to be able to go home, you head to an area of the home where you have prepped ahead of time.  Door handles are covered, Bathroom is off limits to everyone else but you, lysol wipes are everywhere, and you spend the next 3-7 days locked in a bubble.  Kids and dogs are sent elsewhere and all non essential people are banned from seeing you.

Hubby got to visit from the doorway of our bedroom and deliver my meals.  He wore gloves to drop things off and pick things up( I will admit this was a pretty comical sight)….

The first day you are drinking as much water as possible to flush the drug out of your system then double flushing and wiping everything down afterwards to make sure that you didn’t miss 🙂

I spent the first day in bed bingewatching everything that I had stored up on the DVR to get ready for this time.  I mean how bad could it be?  No one to bother me, and all the TV I wanted for the next 4 days.  I had books to read but brain fog was a little too much to be able to concentrate so put those on the back burner for a few days….

By day 2 I had run out of stored programs so was forced to watch NCIS reruns for hours (ok so no one had a gun to my head, but it was all I could think of to watch) while waiting for it to be night time so I could just go to sleep…

Day #3 had me up and VERY antsy so ended up going into my office for a bit (it is attached to my bedroom) and getting some work done and before you ask, I had covered the keyboard with saran wrap and put sheets on the the chair.  Even hubby was starting to miss me or maybe he just missed sleeping in his own bed of that I can’t be 100% sure, but we were both looking forward to day#4 when I could at least begin moving about the house a bit.

Day#4 I was like a kid on Christmas morning who just couldn’t wait to get downstairs to see what Santa had left under the tree.  I must have gone up and down the stairs at least 10x just to burn off some of the excitement.  Next came the fun of washing everything I had come in contact with during my “time out”.  Sheets, clothes, towels everything had to be double washed and dried right down to the comforter on our bed…. Talk about exciting woohoo!!

One more day and I get to go and have a WBS(whole body scan) to see if there are any left over thyroid cells floating around in my body.  The good news is that the radioactive iodine attaches itself to them and the Cancer cells eat it like we would eat good chocolate and ablate any of the leftover cells. Oh and did I mention that we can’t have any chocolate while on the LID diet?

Moral of the story….. It wasn’t fun to be sent to your room as a kid for any length of time and the same holds true now.  While it may be fun to be sent for a “time out” even for 24 hours, anything beyond that just feels like prison.

Now I am off to eat my first piece of chocolate in weeks…..