I begin the next (and hopefully final) phase of my cancer treatment this week...or prepping for it, at least. During the second week of September, I'll be getting a radiation pill that will supposedly work it's way through my body and nuke any remaining cancer cells left over after the thyroidectomy. A week or so after that, I'll get a full-body CAT scan to determine whether the pill did the trick. And for all that to happen, I have to cut out my meds and go on a special diet.
For the radiation to work best, I need to cut out any thyroid hormone in my system, leaving only the thyroid hormone that is mixed in with the cancer cells that may or may not be floating around inside. To do that, I have to stop taking my thyroid meds for the next two weeks and stay off of them until the full-body scan. My doc thinks maybe my thyroid dose has been a little high up to this point, so I've actually lost a few pounds, but I suspect cutting out the thyroid meds entirely will lead me toward a more rounded hobby-appropriate shape. (In other words, I'll probably get fat this month.)
But then again, the other step in prepping for September is to cut out all iodine from my diet, which will help both the radiation better target the cancer and the docs get a more accurate reading from the scan. It will also force me to eat a million times healthier, simply by process of elimination. Iodine, if you didn't know already, is in pretty much everything. Everything good anyway. So, no dairy, no iodized salts, no restaurant food, nothing with preservatives, no condiments, no chocolate, and only specially prepared bread and pasta made with no sodium. I can't substitute soy milk for regular milk either. I can't even have red food coloring.
It's fruit and vegetable city for me--and that may be just what it takes to kill me!
If you're looking for me over the next few weeks, I'll be the sluggish chubster chewing on carrot sticks in the corner of the comic shop.
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