Quick Update

This next week:

I have an appointment with a new endocrinologist at Emory on Wednesday. He should do a blood test to tell me how my thyroid hormone reduction is going. It will be almost two weeks without thyroid hormone at the time of my visit. The earliest time to take the radioactive iodine would be the next Friday, so I could be 2/3 the way there.

I also have an appointment with another Emory doctor--the one who administers the radioactive iodine. This is Friday. This is an introductory meeting to prepare me.

So far, I don't feel too bad. I am a little weak and don't have much endurance, but other than that, I feel normal. I was expecting to feel worse. I have a missing gland--the thyroid, and I am producing ZERO thyroxine in my body. Every cell needs thyroxin daily to survive, so I would have thought I would be having more severe side effects by now. I guess I thought I would feel "drugged"--but that is not the case. I wish our organs could have this amount of time when we really did not need them. Imagine being able to live without your heart, lungs, kidney or liver for a few weeks, after an injury, so we could fix or replace them.

One thing bothers me--how do I know another organ in my body is not infested with cancer? My thyroid never hurt. It was just big and visible, and that is how I knew I had a problem. We can't see what is going on in my body. I wonder what shape my kidneys are in, my liver, my lungs. Geez. They could have their own cancer. I would never know. The moral is "take the best care of yourself". I see people eat crap, abuse their bodies with poisons and alcohol, or with the lack of exercise. They do this because they can't see the effect inside of their body. If we wore our liver or heart on the outside, and you saw the effects of what we did to it--people would take better care of themselves.