Captivity ~ Day Six

Today things went back a little bit to normal. Jim came back home. He still needs to stay away from me for extended periods of time until Monday when they let me know how much radiation is still in my system.

My mom and Lisa went shopping...without me :0(

I was sad...I love shopping. They didn't do fun shopping though because they only went to JC Penneys and Winco, two stores that I really don't like.

Other than that I worked on a few posts. I watched the Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds. Loved It! It's really a deep movie that keeps you guessing and makes you think for hours after the movie as you all of a sudden realize "Oh...that's why he did that" or "Oh...thats why he said that". I highly recommend it.

I'm about 1/6th of the way through the last of the Twilight books, Breaking Dawn and I really have enjoyed the books. So since I only have tomorrow and monday to finish this huge book, I guess I'll go off to read.

Captivity ~ Day Five

Well it's Friday. The last day of my vacation so to speak. Today did get a little bit boring. I did my dishes, cleaned up around the house a little bit. Decided to do my Modge Podge Plate project and realized I didn't have a brush. So I watched Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood.

I have always loved Clint Eastwood. He is the coolest man God ever made. And this movie was no exception. Even though they made him wear old man pants pulled up to his nipples like Erckle/Irkcle? he still looked like the man I would must trust in the whole world if I had to get out of a deadly situation alive. I love his droll sense of humor. Watch it...it's good.

So then my son went to the 99cent store and bought me some sponge brushes and I started on my project! Yipee! I took pictures, but I'm not going to post them until the whole thing is complete. I hope it turns out well. I made them several years ago. I made one for each of my sister in laws, Connie and Norma and one for my sister Lisa and I never ever saw them displayed anywhere! So now I'm making two for me. One with a grape design for my kitchen since I'm trying to do grapes in there and you can't find a grape decorator plate anywhere, and another one with butterflies and flowers that I want to hang in my room, but it may look better in the bathroom.

I actually went outside today and got some more sun....it was great. Being in an office without a window all day is really something I am not looking forward to returning to next week. :0(

I even got to see my mom for about 10 seconds while she dropped off a gallon of milk and some Migas. And my sister came by for another 10 seconds and picked up some movies. So it was a good day, but I'm going a little stir crazy and while I don't want to go back to work, I sure do miss the stores!

And mom...the Migas were great!

Captivity ~ Day Four

Weirdest thing is that yesterday and again today when I woke up I have this raspy, 6 pack of cigarettes a day voice...and I don't smoke! I think it's because when I lay down all the radioactive iodine lodges itself in my throat and chest and I don't even realize it til that first phone call of the day which today was my sister because there's no one here when I wake up so I don't talk until the phone rings. Tonight I'm going to try sleeping sitting up on pillows like I did for about a month after my surgery.

I swear I had so many plans with what I was going to do during this week of being home and tomorrow is my last real day because the weekend is just a normal weekend and I always have Saturday and Sunday off and Monday I have to go back to the doctor for the full body scan and the Geiger check and then hopefully Tuesday it's back to work.

Here's a list of what I wanted to get done:
1. Clean my flower beds (hula-ho them)
2. Modge Podge Plate Craft
3. Finish blue and gold afghan I've been crocheting since my daughter was a freshman in high school...she's now 27.
4. Crochet the little beer caps I've been saving for my crocheted grape project.
5. Wash my kitchen and bathroom curtains
6. Iron my new green blouse and black striped pants
7. Sew the binding back around my favorite tv-watching blanket.

Now here's what I did get done off that list:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ummmm, none of it :0(

But I did:
1. Write a post everyday on my blog
2. Read all of 2009 and 2008 posts on my new fav blog dooce.com
3. Clean top of Fridge
4. Sort through bowls and put some in the yard sale pile
5. Finish books 1 thru 3 of the Twilight Saga
6. Watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (loved it! and love Brad, *sigh*)
7. Watched Paul Blart - Mall Cop (no *sigh*, just watched it out of love for Kevin James)
8. Sat outside in the sun Today and Tuesday
9. Took several naps
10. Cleaned out my Yahoo inbox

So there you go. I have accomplished some things.
and...
I still have tomorrow.

Captivity ~ Day Three

Well I made it! I lived through the night and now Day Three is almost over. I will admit it was a rough night. The lump in my throat grew a little more and then around 2am I went to the bathroom and noticed I was having a hard time breathing and that there was some bubbling and rumbling in my chest when I did breathe. It kinda scared me, but I took an Aleve and went back to bed cause that's how I roll...I don't sweat it and stay up all night worrying...I had dreams to catch up on.

So this morning I woke up and it's really sore and swollen and all red like I have sunburn on my throat and collarbone and the area right underneath. So I had some eggs and coffee. Food seems to be my answer to everything lately! Then of course I called my sister who told me to call my doctor. I called my mom, who told me to call my doctor. So I called my doctor and apparently all this is quite normal and I need to quit my whining and take an Aleve for the pain and drink more water.

So that's what I did today. I just laid around and sat around reading and playing computer games. I tried to go sit outside again today like I did yesterday but even though the sun was out there was a really cool breeze so I had to come back inside. Now I'm just killing time posting this til American Idol comes on because for some reason this week it's on Wednesday and Thursday instead of Tuesday and Wednesday.

I also wanted to share with you how wonderful my brother Fred is. I will admit, there have been many, many, many, MANY! times in my life that I have wanted to kill him. But Fred has always been there to help me or my kids. He's the one the insisted on coming to my surgery because as he put it, "Sometimes you don't wake up from surgery."Comforting, no?

Well he called me a bit ago to see how I was feeling and I whined cause really what else can I do? And who deserves the right to whine more than someone who has cancer? I know, me huh? So he told me that he had bought me some Pixy Stix and Sweetarts and he would bring them by my house and hang them on the mailbox and run for the hills before I nuked him :0)

And he did. And the greatest thing is that he knows what my favorite candies are. He actually somewhere along the way stored that little tidbit about me in his sweet little head. And...he also threw in a bag of California Gourmet all natural macadamia nuts! I love macadamia nuts! I'm debating saving them to bake at a later date into cookies that I can share with my dear little brother, or I could just open the bag and toss a bunch into a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Want to make bets on which one I'm going to do?
Thank you Fred, You're the Best!

Iwanna Wednesday

Since I've been home during my radioactive iodine treatment I find myself trying to find a comfy place I can curl up with a blanket and read. So what Iwanna today is this...

Isn't she beautiful? I'm not gung-ho on the color. But it probably would blend in my living room and give it a pop of color since everything I have is neutral colors.

I wouldn't even mind having the big wall in my living room that color. Hmmm, there's a thought. Lisa? Are you up for painting again?

Captivity ~ Day Two

Today started out pretty good, but it's not ending up so great.

I got up fairly early and decided I would do a super duper job of cleaning my house so that I could enjoy being in it the rest of the week. I had Frosted Flakes and Bananas and toast for breakfast. I had really been craving cereal mostly because it dairy products were on my list of foods I couldn't eat prior to the radioactive iodine treatment. It was yummy!

So then I proceeded to put towels in to wash. I sorted through my bowls and put a ton of them in the yard sale pile and just kept the ones I really use or really love. I have a thing about bowls you see. I did dishes and cleaned the top of my fridge which was icky and where does that stuff come from? I don't find it anywhere in my whole kitchen, only on top of the fridge. It's sticky and greasy and brown and yucky! I sprayed it with Windex while I did the dishes and it came right off slicker than snot!

So I swept and mopped my kitchen and dusted my living room and knick knacks and then went to go vacuum but my vacuum cleaner bag was full and I threw it away because I knew I had another one, but alas, I didn't! I called my sister to see if she would go out into the real world. The real world that I am banished from, during her lunch hour and see if she could get me a Size U Eureka bag. She told me that she just sticks her hand in the little hole and dumps out all the stuff inside and pulls it out with her hands (and then she wonders why she has allergies?). And I'm thinking how disgusting and cheap. I mean between her and her husband they easily make over $230,000,000 per year...Lisa, you can afford a vacuum cleaner bag! (Well maybe not now because she bought them for me, so there goes $1/2 a mil!)

So since I didn't have a vacuum cleaner I Sharked my house. Then I prepared myself a lovely lunch of a Tuna Fish Sandwich with tuna, lettuce (cut up like my brother Fred cuts it), Chopped jalapenos, sweet pickle relish, mayo, Lawry's Seasoning Salt and Black pepper. Mmmmm, it was so delish. And I took it out onto my patio because the sun was shining and bluebirds were building nests in my tree and bees were buzzing and I had my New Moon by Stephenie Meyer book to read and it was sooooooooo wonderful. My first thought when I sat down and felt the sun warm my skin was, "Life is Good, when you have Cancer". Weird I know, but every cloud has a silver lining right? Otherwise, how do we get through the day?

Well so far your probably wondering how a day this wonderful could end badly. Well after lunch and after doing another load of towels, I started getting really cold and tried to take a nap on the couch but it wasn't warm enough so I turned on the electric blanket in my bed and lied down to read and I took a brief nap. Well when I woke up my throat really HURT. Not inside, like a normal sore throat, but outside, under my ears and chin, like someone had tried to choke me while I was napping. And my throat was a little swollen right under my chin.

So I got up and sucked on a lemon, thinking that maybe the radioactive iodine wasn't supposed to be there and sucking on a lemon activates your salivary glands and I was hoping that would help. It didn't, so I ate a banana and watch tv. And about an hour ago I checked my neck again and now there's like this lump the size of a goiter at the base of my throat right above the section where your collar bone meets.

So I WebMD'd and googled and I guess it's normal, but now I'm scared its going to stay that way forever (although I know it's not) and I'm sucking lemons like a crazy person and drinking so much water I may as well sleep on the toilet and well I took an Aleve and ate another tuna sandwich and sat down to post this and if you don't hear from me tomorrow it will be because the lump kept growing and eventually blocked off my breathing tube and I died. Ok, so that's not really going to happen, but now you have to come back tomorrow just to see if I lived right?

Day One in Captivity

This does not bode well for me. It's only day one...and not even a full day because I got home at 4pm and it's only 6:35. So it's day one and already I'm fantasizing and writing about men I love! But then who doesn't love Matt? I mean really!

Anyway...why captivity? What the heck am I talking about? Well today was day one of the I-131 Ablation Radioactive Iodine Treatment for my Thyroid Cancer. About June of 2008 during a routine breast exam my doctor noticed a lump in my throat...it turned into a whole ordeal and you can read about it here and here and here and also right here. There's gory details, pictures and fun for all! Yipee!

So part of the treatment for Thyroid Cancer, besides ripping the thyroid right out of you is this radioactive iodine treatment. And that's what I had done today.

Leading up to today, I've been off of the medication, Synthyroid (a pill I will have to take every single day for the rest of my life) for about 6 weeks. They take you off of it and then have to wait for it all to be out of your system and for something called a TSH level to be at 30. So that means that every day that your off your pill you get sicker and sicker and sicker...ain't thyroid cancer grand?

I was actually kind of lucky in that I didn't get very sick, but then again my TSH level didn't get as high as they wanted as quickly as they wanted. The first blood test I took put my TSH level at 19.2, then 2 weeks later it was at 22.4. About this time they were looking to other options, such as two injections that would make me really sick, really fast and raise my TSH level to where it needed to be...luckily this wasn't necessary as the 3rd time was the charm and the 3rd blood test showed my level to be at 37.77. I took that blood test on Thursday, last week and on Friday I had an appointment with my Endocrinologist, Dr. Catania.

Dr. Catania was thrilled that my level was where it was and said we need to get this done A-SAP, how bout Monday? Wow, I wasn't ready for that...but then again I was because on of the side effects that I did experience in getting sicker and sicker was an intense itching all over and in different areas of my body. Like say my wrist would itch, it would just itch like the biggest mosquito in the world had bitten me and I would scratch it. The second I scratch these little welts and bumps show up and then it itches even more and I scratch or rub or dab Cortaid on it and then it just stops...and starts all over again...someplace else, Arghhhhhhhhhh!

So that's what I was up to today. I went to a Radiologist who took some readings of my body with a Geiger counter. I think that was just in case I was born radioactive they would know how high the radioactiveness I normally am would be measured before they nuked me some more. They then took me into this little lead lined room, about the size of a small walk in closet and there's a little item that looks like a Size D battery and the top comes off and the little pill is inside and no one but you can touch it! They just turn the little holder that is aptly named Lil Piglet over and the radioactive capsule about the size of a Contac cold capsule comes out and they give you a glass of water and you suck it down. I tried to locate a photo of a Lil Piglet or Lil Pig and you can google radioactive iodine holder and see a photo of it but when you click on it...it mysteriously says Webpage cannot be found, hmmmm.

I even went so far as to type in Nuclear Supplies and was unable to open any of those websites either, but I expect the FBI or the CIA or the FTC or some lettered agency to break my door down any minute and arrest me! So I best hurry to finish this post.

Anyway, they send my radioactive ass merrily on it's way telling me not to dilly dally in the waiting room, huh? what? huh? Dilly dally? in the waiting room? I've never done that even when I wasn't radioactive.

So I drive home and for the next 7 days...I have to remain locked up here. Dismissed, unwanted and unloved by all humanity :0(

So I'm gonna have lots and lots and lots and did I mention LOTS of time to blog...lucky you, my faithful readers. That means you April and Lisa!

Stay tuned....