*waves*

[kyburg]

mactavish? I'm sending a newly diagnosed case of Hashimoto's over to you - inagawayuu. Treat with care. She needs lots of warm fuzzies right now - she also got the papillary cancer along with the Hashimoto's diagnosis.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

OK. I went in for surgery on Wednesday morning, went home Thursday afternoon, and was back at my desk job on the following Monday. Really getting back to truly 100% took a month or so, but I was at 85% that first Monday back at work. Part of what it took to really get back to 100% was getting the T4 levels right, and part of it was just time healing. Until your T4 is correct, you won't have quite the energy level you're used to, particularly with exercise.

As for RAI. They'll take you off your T4 medicine (Synthroid/levothyroxine) for two weeks. The second week, you'll go on a low-iodine diet; you'll pretty much need to cook everything you eat fresh. Eating out ist verboten. After that, on a Friday, they'll give you a small dose of radioactive iodine. The following Monday, they'll take a scan, then give you the ablation dose. You may be a little queasy for a couple hours. Depending on the hospital and what state you're in, and whether you have small children, they may want to lock you up in the iso ward, or they may simply let you go home and follow radiation precautions, which basically amount to be extremely careful with body fluids and with staying too close to anyone for too long. But the diet, the radiation precautions, and the mild gassiness were the worst of it. You're going to keep all your hair, you're not going to get real sick, and you're probably going to have a reasonably normal life when all this is over. You will have to take medicine every morning for the rest of your life, and wait after taking it before eating (this is important! if you take your T4 with food it's less effective, particularly with calcium or zinc), and you'll get real familiar with your doctor(s)... but other than that? If you have to face the dreaded "C" word, this is *the* kind to get.

And there's a total metric truckload of information about this on the web. www.thyca.org is a good starting point; I think the most important thing we found on the web is recipes, becaue this low-iodine diet thing is kind of a pain...

(Please note: Once you've had your RAI, and your thyroid is no more, you basically don't care about iodine anymore until they want you to do another scan. This isn't permanent, just about a week and a half. It's just that *every meal* has to be planned in detail...)

Oh, I missed something. Definitely take extra C for a week or so starting when you go back on your normal diet after your RAI ablation dose. I didn't, and I got a nasty sinus infection - it lowers your resistance. But don't take the C during your low-iodine period without checking your specific brand with your doc; some of them have iodine-based dyes in them that you don't want...

Feel free to ask all the questions you want. If I don't know I'll say so. The obvious email address works as well, and we probably should do it that way to avoid spamming poor kyburg's inbox too badly.. :)

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't mind being reminded what helpful friends I have on my FL - not at all.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I can't *not* help, you know?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling, bubba. I do, indeed.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

No, no, no. I'm Billy-Joe-Bob. He's Bubba.

:) :) :) :)

(Dang. That's the second time in a week I've needed a "johnny reb" icon.)

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Or we can just call you Uncle Junior - I acquired one of those with marriage the last time. It's truly hysterical.

Junior is over 6' tall and 300 lbs. He's also a great-grandfather (I think) -

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a once-friend of mine, who would make wry comments about his baby brother... McClueless was about 5'5" and might've weighted 160lbs soaking wet. Scoot, the "baby brother", was several years younger, but 6'2" and about 200.

But that's Weird Uncle Technoshaman. A la Godfather Drosselmeir. :)