The story...

Being the geek that I am, when I went in for my radioactive iodine treatment on Friday, I asked the nuclear medicine technician if I could take some pictures to post on my blog. He laughed at me and told me I could, and even assisted :).

The experience wasn't quite what I expected it to be, but it was pretty cool at the same time. I'm sure you're thinking, "Radioactive substance in your body...Cool, huh, Kiara?". But I did think it was pretty fascinating.

I was at the doctor's office for about a total of 30 minutes. When I got there, the nuclear med tech had me verify my identity to make sure they were giving the iodine to the right person. I agreed that it was probably a good thing to double check for a treatment like this. Doing an X ray on the wrong person is not such a big deal, but administering radioactive substance to the wrong person could be disastrous! He asked me some questions, and then asked if I had any questions. Then he told me we were just waiting for the iodine to be delivered. So, we waited about 15 minutes....When it finally arrived, I laughed when I saw that it was inside an ammunition box.


Then, he pulled out another container, about the size of a soda can, that was pure lead. He had me hold it without warning me how heavy it was and I nearly dropped it on the ground! Haha. Nice joke!

You can kind of see my name printed in the yellow box :)

Then, he opened up the lead container and pulled out a tiny little vile about half the size of an old film canister. The iodine was actually inside the tiny vile, inside the lead container, inside the ammo box. Talk about protection!

He weighed the glass vile to make sure we got the right amount, and told me that he'd page the doctor to have him come witness me take it. When the doctor came in, I had to verify my identity again (better to tripple check than to be wrong, I guess!). I was told that I'd be sipping the iodine up through a straw. And that part wasn't really what I expected it to be. I guess I half expected them to just give it to me in a little sample cup like they give to you when you are administered medicine at the hospital, but I was way off on that assumption. So when he told me to sip, I wasn't sure he was serious because when I did sip, I got like 2 drops up through the straw. (He did tell me that's what would happen but I didn't really expect it for some reason.) Then he squirt a little bit of water in the vile to rinse it out and made me sip again. We did this a total of 3 times, and then he said I was done ;) He measured the vile again to make sure I got all of it. And they sent me home. That was pretty much the whole thing.

One thing I thought was interesting was that the iodine they used was just plain old iodized table salt (about 3 little granules of it). To make it radioactive, they put it in some kind of machine (this was done before it was brought to the office) that did something funky that made it radioactive. Kind of weird/fascinating at the same time. So, I'm still a little radio active, but not enough to damage anyone so I'm allowed to be around people again. I didn't feel any different (which I didn't expect to) except that my thyroid was a little sore on Saturday but it seems to be all better now. Anyway, that's pretty much the whole story. Now we're just waiting for time to pass and for all the radiation to get out of my body. :)