My post-radioactive life

There was a lot of confusion around the time of and after the RAI treatment. I attribute this to the communication I had with my radiologist. He was kind of rough around the edges. After a while, I came to the conclusion that he may be real smart and he may know science and medicine, but he must be new or something. He didn't seem very good at treating people. This gave me a great appreciation for my endocrinologist. She's great. So anyway, of course I was dying to know what would come next and my mom and I asked him many questions around the time of the RAI. He'd kind of brush me off and say, "Yeah, yeah." So I thought I'd know the results of the RAI, like right after. But that wasn't the case. I came back for another appointment and I thought I'd be getting some answers, but he had none. He explained that the medicine was still working in my body and would continue to work for a few more months. He said I'd get some answers in a few months.

I was somewhat relieved to know that there wouldn't be any answers for a while. Because I hadn't gotten an answer that I liked in a while. But then my endocrinologist emailed me and said they found another small tumor. She said she was working with my surgeon and my radiologist and they would decide together whether I'd need more surgery. I was totally floored. She wasn't specific about where the tumor was, so my imagination ran wild. I feared it was in the middle of my chest, like that scan had suggested. I pictured a big scar running down my chest. I was freaked out. I had basically been told, "You might be getting bad news soon!" Radioactive iodine basically takes care of small remnants of thyroid cancer, not tumors that are 2 cm x 2 cm. That's the size of the one they found.

At this point, I felt pretty beat down. I carried that stuff with me. I just picture me walking around, slowed down by all this stuff. I just carried it on my shoulders. On August 8, I went to my friend Olivia's house. And somehow that's where I was supposed to be when I got the news. I got the call that I had to have a second surgery. I was crushed. I'm glad I wasn't alone, I was glad to be with a friend. I really didn't want to leave her house, honestly. It's always hard to share that news. Having to tell my family was tough. This also put my fall semester of college in jeopardy.

The radiologist said that the tumor actually hindered the RAI treatment. He said it essentially was sucking up all the medicine, so the medicine didn't get to all the other parts that it was supposed to. I don't know, I'm not a doctor.

The next day Olivia and I went to Lake Tahoe for the day. It was so nice to get away and escape my life. It was my mom's birthday that day, which was unfortunate. It's unfortunate for things like cancer to infringe on days that are supposed to be happy.

It was such a hot and sweaty day, but very fun.

So I was back at work and summer was winding down. My boyfriend is a biology major and he hopes to go on to medical school, so he takes his education very seriously. This means that the beginning of a new semester is bittersweet. We don't get much quality time in during school because he is so dedicated and his course load is pretty challenging. Because of this, we decided to make a little getaway before school started. It was perfect. I had so much fun in Tahoe, that I decided I wanted to go back. We kayaked on the lake, and it was awesome. I got to be really present and in the moment. I knew that pretty soon I'd be back in the hospital and in pain and the whole thing.

We had a delicious dinner and I tried some new foods that I ended up loving. I'm a pretty picky eater, so that's big. It just felt like, this is living. This is what I was put on the Earth to do. To laugh, to kayak, to try new foods. I just don't feel like I was meant to be sick and ill.

Sometime after that, I got a date for my surgery, September 14. My doctors didn't want to wait on it at all.