The day before my first appointment, Texas was hit with a massive winter storm. The biggest one in history. Roads were completely frozen, car wrecks totaling 100+ cars were shown on the news, power outages were occurring across the whole state, and temperatures had dropped below zero.

I wanted more than anything to be done with this treatment and move on with my life, so I was praying desperately for things to not be delayed or canceled due to this.

I stayed at my parents house and my dad graciously drove me to and from my appointment each day, braving the icy roads at 6:30am. The hospital was a ghost town. I’m pretty sure I was the only patient in there, along with a skeleton crew of nurses.

I was ushered to the waiting room, where I worked on some word searches in a booklet my Aunt had given me. Having a distraction like that was the absolute best gift.

Then I met the chief nurse, who I’ll refer to as Beth for her sake of privacy. I don’t even know if she was the chief, but she acted like she was. We skipped the small talk and she took me upstairs immediately to get my blood drawn.

She muttered about the door being locked and proceeded to bang aggressively against the door to reach the staff inside. About a minute later, a pack of nurses came out and were heading to the cafeteria for breakfast after spending the night because of the weather.

Beth stood in front of their path and told them that someone needed to do my blood-work. They had no clue if I was registered, what exactly I needed tested, etc., yet Beth continued to answer each one of their questions with irritation. I stood behind her with widened eyes, hoping they could read my apology from that expression.

When one of them agreed to do my labs, Beth left in a huff and sort of dumped me there with no further direction. Gloria, the nurse who drew my blood, was the most refreshing change. Soft-spoken and sweet, she gingerly inserted the needle and then escorted me back through the windiness of the hallways to the basement that held the lovely radiation department.   

Beth then came in and told me about the restrictions I would need to follow after swallowing my pill. Stay away from everyone for five days. No contact with pregnant people or babies for a month or so. Flush the toilet twice. Shower often. Use dispensable dishes. Drink lots of water. Suck on sour candies to keep the salivary glands working. Remain on the LID diet until your scans. Stay away from pets. Use fluoride toothpaste and brush often. Wash laundry twice and by itself. Wipe down everything you touch. Don’t get pregnant for at least a year.

She also told me a little fun fact about how they used to give doses of this that were 5X the strength of what I was getting, but it was found to be linked with a higher likelihood of developing breast cancer. Not exactly the thing I wanted to hear. Who trained this woman?

Then a new nurse came in, had me pull my pants down, and gave me my first injection in the butt. There’s something very humiliating about getting a shot in the ass. The way Beth said, “the shot goes in your buttocks sweetie” made it very hard for me to withhold an eye-roll.

Essentially what this first shot was doing was stimulating my thyroid hormone levels so that the RAI would easily detect where in my body had thyroid cells remaining, and then kill it off.

I was told I’d feel a bit run down, but most people hold up just fine. She was correct in that, as I felt exhausted all day and was in bed and asleep by 7pm. My TSH levels shot up to 111! (the standard range is 0-4)

It was a chaotic Day One of what would become a progressively more and more stressful week.

~to be continued in Part 3~