When Life Throws You a Curveball...

Hello Internet! It has been awhile.  Here's a quick update and we'll be off and running with a series of blogs. 

So I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in February of this year.   They caught it early.  I had my thyroid removed over the course of the spring and I've been on synthroid since.  Everything is going well! 

However being the giant Google researcher than I am I was annoyed that I couldn't find hardly anyone's story detailing a treatment I'm going in for in a few weeks.  So I decided to document my experience and hopefully help out someone else down the road.

Here's where we begin: they switched me over to a different thyroid replacement medication called Cytomel for 5 weeks to prepare me for Radioactive Iodine Therapy(RAI).  Basically I go in and they have me swallow a pill and then I'm radioactive for a week. I say basically but its actually much more.  I'll get to that later.

Tomorrow I begin a Low Iodine Diet (LID) AND go off my Cytomel completely for TWO WEEKS. 

Now for those of you who have no idea what I'm in for I'll give you a brief analogy.  Imagine you are driving around in a car with a full tank of gas.  You get home and park your car for the night and the tank is still full.  When you wake up in the morning to leave for work you find that your gas line has sprung a leak and through the course of the next day or two your tank drains to empty.  Now you're stuck on the expressway with an empty fuel tank. 

This is how I have perceived going off my medication will be.  Your thyroid produces a hormone that fuels all your organs and gives you energy.  It controls metabolism, energy levels and mental clarity.  So you can imagine how thrilled I am to be stopping my meds completely.  My endocrinologist told me to prepare for the worst exhaustion, fatigue and sluggishness (is that a word??) possible.  I am grateful he did not sugar coat it.  I am hoping that I will just feel very tired all the time but my infinite googling has told me it will probably be worse. 

I read somewhere that it is similar to having the worst flu you've ever had.  That horrible brain fog and fatigue that drains you to the point of reaching for the kleenex box exhausts you.  I hope it isn't that bad.  I might be trying to fool myself.

So starting tomorrow no meds AND the low iodine diet.  which in itself is challenging.  I'll blog about the whole experience as I go.  14 days until my RAI.

Oh did I mention I have to continue working until then?  Thankfully my employment provides me with a verrrrry flexible schedule so it should be okay. I hope. Cross your fingers for me.

~Sally