Hi folks
This should be the last update for a while.
We went through the ablation process last week and had the full-body-scan this morning. The results are that all the right parts are lit up nicely like they've absorbed the iodine and should be killed. The scan revealed a couple of suspicious bright spots in my upper chest, but those are probably just lymph nodes and while they may have cancer they are lit up with the iodine so they should also be killed.
The scan also revealed more thyroidal cells in my tongue than would be expected normally, but again, they are lit up properly. This is most probably because in pre-birth development the thyroid actually develops from the same group of cells that the tongue does, but it is not a concern.
At this point there's no reason to assume that the treatment hasn't been successful.
I'm back on my thyroid hormones and eating normal food again. My energy level crashed during the ablation period, but is coming back, and we should be on track to being normal again for next week.
The next step is to get onto a stable dose of the long-term thyroid hormone and monitor various blood chemical levels. Also there we will repeat the iodine scan in six- to eight-months or so; that will require me being on the iodine diet again for a couple of weeks, then another radioactive iodine dose although not nearly as large as what I received last week. It is hoped that the magic thyrogen drug will be more generally available then and I won't have to go through the hormone withdrawal as well.
If all goes well, there shouldn't be any more intervention-type treatments to go through for this.
I would like to thank everyone for their support over the last while, it really made a difference.
