I Think Madame Curie Saved My Life

For my Third Day of testing,
I brought Kelly-Across-The-Street for support.
Since I have so many doctor appointments,
I only want Scott to take off time for the big ones.
The scary ones.
The clausterphobic ones where I need him
 to hold my toes and sing hymns to me while I am in some tiny tube.

I didn't make Kelly do those things,
but she was my photographer.

Like the serious looking metal vial?

The radiologist unscrews it and pulls out another little jar.

He unscrews that and puts the pill in my hand.

I swallow it.

I couldn't drink any fluids for four hours. 

The radioactivity needed to disperse in my body.

It's on a mission to find cancerous thyroid cells

and light them up like a Christmas tree
for the body scan on Friday.

On the way home, Kelly reminded me that the measurement,
 millicurie, was named after Madame Curie.

It all clicked together in my brain.

"So, Madame Curie saved my life!"

"Yea," agreed Kelly, "pretty much."

I thought of her brilliant research with radioactivity,

a term coined by her and her husband Pierre.

.

 In 1938,  Glenn T. Seaborg and John J. Livingood,
nuclear physicists at the University of California-Berkeley,

combined uranium with iodine to produce Iodine-131, or I-131.

It is used to diagnose and treat thyroid cancer.
Iodine goes straight to the thyroid.
The attached uranium kills it.
It's pretty amazing.

However, she didn't live to see this breakthrough in nuclear medicine.

She died in 1934 from too much radiation exposure.

(From my hospital door during I-131 treatment in August 2005. 

I was given 100 milllicuries)

Now, I am radioactive.

I cannot be around people.

I especially cannot be around pregnant women and young children.

I have to flush twice,

and it's not because it is a long way to the kitchen.

I have to wash my clothes separately, and rinse twice.

I have to wash my dishes separately, and wash twice.

I can't cry about this,

because my tears are hazardous waste.

I am thankful I don't have a cold or the flu.

A sneeze could be a call for a haz-mat team.

It's just weird.

I am home in my room, staying away from people.
It was hard explaining that to Rebekah.

We snuggle, hug and kiss all day long.

My girls in August 2005,

getting a glimpse through the open door during my radioactive iodine.

Beka didn't like it then, either.

Today, Jon took her for a bike ride.

Bethany took her out to buy something for dinner.

She was allowed to watch a few movies,
something we never allow on a weekday.

We have one more full day of separation.
I'm missing my kisses and luvies from my kids,
but I am so thankful.
This is such a short time of separation.

As I sit alone in my room,
 my computer, my phone and my Zune keeping me company,
I'm thinking about the two people that died for me.

One on a cross,
one in a laboratory.

Day Three is Over.