Saturday, April 24, 2010

LOL + LOF = Good Times




What happens when Living Out Loud and Leap OF Faith get together? Good laughs, good food, and good times!!!

It was so nice to finally see Leap Of Faith and her crew this weekend. It had been about a year since we had seen them, so we had alot of catching up to do. The funny thing is, I still don't feel like we got "caught up". It was nice, however, to let the kids play together while all of us adults chatted. Hopefully it won't be another year before we see them again!!!

Pictures will soon follow................ 8)

P.S. Happy Birthday, K.!!!!!






Preparing For RAI...






Before I post something from today, I wanted to catch up with some things I've had to do since my diagnosis of thyroid cancer. When Monday, April 5 came around I had to start a low iodine diet. That was absolutely NO fun! It didn't start out being that bad, but by the end, I was having to FORCE myself to eat. The choices I had for the food I ate on this diet were so limited! I couldn't have any dairy products, nothing from the sea, nothing from a can, etc. I could pretty well only have fresh or frozen fruits and veggies and meat (about 3 oz. a day), as long as they didn't contain salt. I could eat salt, but not the iodized version. It had to be Plain salt. The purpose of this diet was to starve the remaining thyroid cells of iodine so that when I took the radioactive iodine, they would soak the RADIOACTIVE iodine up, and be killed off. I found out that there is really no such thing as a total thyroidectomy, even though I had had one. They have to leave some of the thyroid cells in there.

On April 12 and 13 my family and I had to make a trip to the Cancer Center in a neighboring town so I could get a thyrogen shot each day. The first day also included some blood work. Then on Wednesday, April 14, I made a trip to the hospital in this same neighboring town by myself to take the Radioactive Iodine (RAI) pill. I had to be separated from from my family for about 4 days because I was RADIOACTIVE!!! I even had to wear a bracelet for 4 days so in case something happened, people would be aware of my state of RADIOACTIVITY. =) I missed them all so much, but I enjoyed not having to fuss at anyone and not doing ANYTHING!!! S. thought since I was radioactive I had these supernatural powers. She held up a blade of grass and wanted me to burn it! I tried staring at it as hard as I could, but it just wouldn't burn!!! LOL

By Friday, April 16, I received word from my doctor's office that I could go back to eating normal!! Praise the LORD!!! I still had to be careful, though because I felt like I couldn't handle just anything.

This past Thursday, April 22, I went back to the hospital to have my scan. The lady said things seemed to look okay. I hope to hear from my doctor in the next few days to hear the "official word."