Radioactive

Whenever I have looked directly at this thing, I have been totally calm. Cancer. Surgery. Radioactive Iodine. ‘S all good.

But when concentrating on something else, sometimes I have been temporarily seized by an internal tornado of butterflies–or more often, the sensation of ice-water pouring through my veins. My subconscious isn’t listening, apparently, and when my conscious mind stops supervising, the natural man creeps out. I nearly  had a panic attack three times this week, just out of the blue, and had to examine why I was having this physical reaction to something I’d pushed aside, mentally.

Makes me think I should have gone into psychology. It’s a fascinating thing. I’ve had some crazy, crazy thoughts.

But at any rate, yesterday’s surgery went well, I’m told. Although, it was a bit disconcerting when I first checked in, and the second question the receptionist asked was whether or not I have a living will. Followed by “Here, we’re going to give you four shots of radioactive dye, and we’re going to use this Geiger counter during surgery to track where it goes, so we know what to take out.”

I went under shortly before 11am and woke up at 2:30, although I pretended to be out for a while longer: general anesthesia felt lovely. Although, I did keep seeing strange things, like one of my first period students walking around in scrubs, impersonating a doctor. So maybe I wasn’t pretending after all? Had similar hallucinations all the way home.

I was made to solemnly swear not to drive a motor vehicle or shower for 48 hours post-op, so I stayed home today, though I think I would have been fine. I can’t really talk, but I still have my teacher evil-eye down pretty solid. As it is, I just cranked out a lot of paperwork that’s been piling up around here, so it wasn’t a total waste.

I’ve got three sites I haven’t been brave enough to pull bandages off yet, but the publicly visible one–above my right wrist, has a bandage only about 4 inches long, so it’s significantly smaller than the first doc recommended. Within the next week or so, I should hear back if we got clean margins and clear lymph nodes, and if so, we’ll be done with it. Meanwhile I kind of wish I had Geiger counter of my own. 

There’s got to be something fun a person can do while radioactive. Yes?