I’ve been on synthroid (replacement thyroid hormone) since December 22 and most of the symptoms I experienced are now gone. I still get an occasional muscle cramp or ache, but nothing like I had been seeing.

My doctor noticed that I was taking a diuretic and said that this could be the cause for the muscle cramps I had been experiencing. I’ve been off the drug for several days and the cramps have almost vanished, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

My next scheduled doctor visit is at the end of February, when I presume we’ll look at thyroid hormone levels and thyroglobulin levels to establish a baseline for the next treatment steps.

Based on the result of those scans, the doctor set my “big” dose of radioactive iodine to 75 millicuries.  In terms of the range of potential doses used to treat thyroid cancer, it’s in the lowest range of doses.

On Friday morning, I took a 76 millicurie dose of radioactive iodine.  Apparently, I also contracted a cold and cough.  Since the radiation, lack of thyroid hormone (part of the treatment), and restrictive diet most likely reduced the overall effectiveness of my immune system, I now have a sinus and chest cold on top of the symptoms of hypothyroidism and radiation treatment.  I’m sneezing and coughing on a pretty regular basis, and feeling exhausted and tired much of the rest of the time.

I know this is nothing compared to what other cancer patients like my mother (who died earlier this year from melanoma) have gone through, and I am both respectful of that and grateful that my situation isn’t worse than it is.  Still, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I feel worse than I can remember feeling in a long, long time… if not the worst ever.  While I will probably never understand what my mother went through in her final days, I think I have a greater appreciation of it than I ever did before.

Tomorrow morning, I look forward to being off the low-iodine diet.  That means I can have things with dairy (like my morning coffee with milk), sandwiches with cheese, and pizza again.  I can have sushi, Chinese food, Indian food, and more.  Perhaps even better than that, I’ll once again be back on the synthetic thyroid hormone. That should be the end of the severely dry skin, muscle weakness, unexplained muscle cramps, shortness of breath, and other symptoms I’ve had to endure since before Thanksgiving.

This coming Friday (12/26) is another set of scans for radiation, to determine where the last “big” dose went. Friday’s scan is supposed to be “more revealing” in some way than the one I had last Thursday.

After that, I’ll be working with the endocrinologist to regulate the dose of synthroid I’ll be taking from now on to give me a “normal” level of thyroid hormone in my blood.  I guess you could say that the end is in sight, at least as much as there is an end to this.  I’ll be having tests each year from now to confirm that the cancer hasn’t returned, so in a sense it will never be truly “behind me” and will always be somewhere out there in the distance.

The next step will be for me to meet with the nuclear medicine specialist who will eventually administer radioactive iodine to me.  That appointment has not yet been scheduled, but is expected to take place in the next couple of weeks.  After that meeting, I’ll most likely be placed on an iodine-restricted diet, designed to make any thyroid or cancer cells remaining after surgery starved for iodine.  Then, when the radioactive iodine is administered, they’ll grab up all they can get and die out.

As I understand it, for 5 days after taking the iodine, I’m to minimize my exposure to other people to prevent the radiation from affecting them.  If you’re curious as to what those restrictions might be, there are other web sites that can tell you.

Once we’ve done that treatment, I’ll start taking synthetic thyroid hormone.  The challenge will be to determine the correct dosage for me, as each person is a little different.  Once that’s settled, I’ll have annual checks to see if the cancer has returned.

The pathology report showed that the cancer didn’t appear to extend beyond my thyroid, which means that the radioactive iodine should get any remaining cancer or thyroid cells.

A few months back, I noticed that it seemed like the medications I took in the morning were getting stuck in my throat.  I’d go most of the morning feeling like I had a capsule in there that just wouldn’t go down.  Then I noticed on mornings I forgot to take my medications that it still felt that way.  I thought I’d massage my throat and see if it helped with the sensation any.  In doing so, I found a rather large lump. It felt like about half the size of a golf ball.