The RAI treatment basically consists of being on a low iodine diet for several weeks, getting a series of thyrogen injections, swallowing a radioactive pill, then getting a CT scan to show where in the body has cancerous thyroid cells remaining.

Sometimes you just need one treatment, other times you may need more. Luckily for my case, my doctor said one low dose should do the trick.

I was left to my own defenses again as I googled around trying to fill in the gaps that were left behind by my doctor. She is amazing, really, but honestly I needed a solid hour with her for her to give me all the information I wanted to know.

The low iodine diet was its own mess. Do you know what has iodine in it? EVERYTHING!! Bread, milk, eggs, pastries, nuts, chips.. I was basically restricted to rice cakes and lettuce for three weeks (only being slightly overdramatic here).

The main stressor was the fear of consuming the wrong food, which would lead to false results during my body scan and treatment. If I eat the wrong thing, it may show there is metastasis in areas of my body that are actually fine. It could be more cancer, or I just ate too many iodized salty goods. As if getting radiation treatment isn’t nerve-wracking enough!

Thank God for my mom and Trader Joes! She spent so much time researching the food I could eat and grocery shopping every day after work to get me stocked and ready- finding iodine free bread, cashew ice cream, coconut yogurt, you name it.

As the date crept closer, I waited for more information from the hospital. Don’t they need to make sure I’m dieting? Shouldn’t they go over all of this with me?

I had no idea how much time to ask of off work, because I had no idea what to expect to feel like during & after this treatment.

The thyroid cancer support group on facebook had people sharing horror stories left and right- of severe vomiting, rotting teeth, and fevers. But my doctor told me I should be feeling fine, a bit tired if anything from being off my meds.

I was hoping for more clear answers from the nuclear medicine department themselves, so at the two week mark, I called to have someone confirm my appointment and go over all the specifics with me.

I was met twice by people promising to call me back, then never doing so. Once by a technician who said the typical protocol is that they give a call just a few days before the appointment to go over all this stuff.

Do people really just casually roll up on their appointment day to swallow this cancer-killing, toxic pill that would show if there was any metastasis with not a million burning questions like I did?

Finally, when I got ahold of someone, they told me the administrator had scheduled me for the wrong treatment, so the dates and timeline I had down were actually incorrect! This just reinstated my uncertainty with this whole procedure and this office of nurses who would be in charge of me.

I was nervous that I was about to get pumped with the wrong toxins. No one I talked to in the nuclear med department was on the same page. I had no idea what these thyrogen shots even were until I called my doctor in tears, asking her to go over it with me because I wasn’t feeling confident that everyone who was supposed to be taking care of me knew what they were doing.

She was so patient and reassuring, which helped calm the anxiety for at least a day.

Then came the biggest winter storm Texas has ever seen, right smack dab at the beginning of my scheduled treatment week.

~to be continued in Part 2~