Lurker who has personally swallowed 700 millicurries of I-131 radiation (true)

Hi all,

My name is Dennis. I live on a 240 acre horse ranch in Austin Texas, before that i lived in Pismo Beach, CA and Santa Barbara... grew up in San Diego (not too far from San Onofre)

I have been following the pages about Japan and the subsequent Nuclear meltdown underway...

Does it sometimes feel like we are the only ones who care? really? I paraphrased some of the more interesting bullet points on my face book page and added "thoughts?" at the end of my posting....

I have a lot of friends here in Texas and a lot of old school buddies still in CA. I got ridiculed for being Scare monger, Chicken little.... "Sky is Falling!" and really i kept the what if and could , maybes to a minimum, just talked about what really happened and how they are spinning wheels trying to get resolved. So the public just does not care or just does not want ot know... GO FIGURE?

I-131? yes... it is 100% percent true i have swallowed 207mc, 266mc, and 244mc... thats a lot of radiation baby ! i'm going to post this in the japan thread i follow and if there is any interest, ill detail the effects out... it was an adventure... (MD Anderson patient #509937)

Thanks for listening (reading)
Dennis

reply to post by PISMO


Are you a Tuma? not "do you have a tuma?" are you yourself a Tuma?...

There was a scientist back in 1970 something that took a spent fuel rod and held it in his hands....He said certain types of radiation they say are harmful are really not. I can't remember his name at present but if I run across him I will post what I find...I just know he was a scientist and filmed himself holding one of these rods....

reply to post by PISMO


What tests were done on you that gave you those results?

reply to post by PISMO

I-131? yes... it is 100% percent true i have swallowed 207mc, 266mc, and 244mc... thats a lot of radiation baby ! i'm going to post this in the japan thread i follow and if there is any interest, ill detail the effects out... it was an adventure... (MD Anderson patient #509937)

to wash it down with

Now, details please - first why? Are you OK? Will you stay OK? I hope so...
When?
And yes, I'm sure there'll be lots of interest in the effects of taking that stuff.

If you are serious you have some serious balls man

For this reason, high doses of the isotope are sometimes paradoxically less dangerous than low doses, since they tend to kill thyroid tissues which would otherwise become cancerous as a result of the radiation. For example, children treated with moderate dose of I-131 for thyroid adenomas had a detectable increase in thyroid cancer, but children treated with a much higher dose did not.

- wiki wiki

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Welcome to ATS

Thanks for the handshakes. Nice to meet some new folks. I will expand on the details of the radiation treatment and subsequent symptoms and sickness. Since that is probably everybody’s interest. The radiation sickness

Edit > This is the first time I have ever detailed my cancer fight in writing. I have given presentations at Elk’s lodges and Kiwanis Clubs but never put it all in writing. It is long I just realized. Sorry. I organized it in why? How? Diagnosed? So on…. If you can’t read it all (I don’t blame you) PLEASE read the short DIAGNOSED chapter. IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE.

A couple of you are asking for details... so here goes. (please excuse the punctuation, i sometimes get on a two fingered typing roll and cant be bothered with the shift key slowing me down... )

Why?
Thyroid Cancer (Papillary thyroid carcinoma / lymphoma) Overtook my Thyroid, my lymph nodes, my vocal cords (yes i can still talk in a cool Sam Elliot sorta way) and into my lung tissue. The cancer in my lungs (x-rays look like someone sprinkled pepper all over top 2/3 of my lungs... lots black specs) The cancer in my lungs is main reason for the I-131, really no other way to treat it. Also because of the scar tissue in my neck, hard to excise anything out of there anymore, so radiation is my only treatment left.

How?
Funny story, I used to do fire restoration. you know clean up and rebuild after smoke / water damage. We did a large project on this old catholic church, inside they all these radio isotope glow in the dark exit signs. in all our training, there is certain things we don't put in landfill... lead, solvents, radioactive isotopes... So i took the signs apart and put them (green glowing rods.. I SWEAR this is true story) in a zip lock bag to find the proper authorities to give to. I know you all are screaming WHAT? you touched them? WHAT? but really they look like golf pencils (small about 3" long and green) they look 100% harmless. and this was back in 93-94-95? kinda before the internet, i would of had to go look it up in the library to find any info out... not like today with my fancy iphone. So i bagged them (nice handful of them) and promptly forgot about them in my truck for about a week. Then forgot about them in my desk drawer (at work where I sit for hours) for couple of weeks... well at least that’s the only time i can ever remember being exposed to any kind of radioactive material. and the type of cancer i HAVE is primarily cause by exposure. I was diagnosed in 2005 (about 10 years after the church clean-up?) Believe me... i have spent hours and hours trying to figure out how and why i have Thyroid cancer... this is the only thing I could ever come up with? Thoughts?

Diagnosed?
Like most 30 something guys, I only went to doctor (read med-quick-stop) if i lost a arm or something similar... well i was having this crazy jaw pain, right under right side back by my neck. Went to see the med stop doc he prescribed anti-inflammatory to reduce the swelling. ok. fast forward 18 months... i keep nicking this hard pimple on my neck while shaving. it feels like a marble deep in my neck muscle? more anti-inflammatory should do the trick, right? Another month or two goes by and i develop a similar marble like cyst under the skin of my scrotum. I IMMEDIATELY got on the phone to a Urologist, he refers me to an Endocrinologist, I waste no time asking how we can get this tested, looked at... QUICK. STAT!

Edit > This is mostly addressed to the guys reading this, women seem to be pretty good about yearly visits of at least some sort. Guys go get a check up 2x a year. A simple blood test would have diagnosed my cancer probably THREE years before the biopsy (at time of my first surgery My Thyroglobulin levels were 1094 ng/ml, normal is 10-30. There was a lot of thyroid tissue in my body, the blood test at a regular check up would have caught it long before.) It takes less than an hour, costs about $100 out of pocket and to this date, no one has poked me in the butt! Save your life. Make the call today. Preaching Done.

The endocrinologist (whom i should have called year and half before) schedules me for a biopsy. THE NEXT DAY. In particular something they call a "fine needle aspiration". yes its a fine needle, but they poke it in about 30 places and pull tissue back into the syringe. yes as painful as it sounds. The tech doing the procedure, tells me the scrotum lump is infected fatty tissue (an un-popped pimple basically) and the marble in my neck (that i keep nicking with my razor) looks like Thyroid tissue, strange because its miles from my thyroid....




The battle?

1. Full body CT scan (with my first tiny dose of radiated iodine they use it as a marker to spot Thyroid tissue), MRI, X-rays, Sonogram... a really cool map of my whole body using all this real expensive diagnostic testing (Thank you Blue Cross of CA)

2.. Ear to ear neck surgery. Thyroid (or what used to be my thyroid) looks like a ran over cantaloupe and my lymph nodes look like a bunch of grapes all grown together The neck incision really does go from ear to ear and has about 20+ staples holding my head on. Zero pain. Really. I guess your neck is one of those places that you get very little pain from. The only pain i get is weeks later when the nerves start making connections again and it feels like one of those rub your feet of the carpet touch your little brothers ear electrical zaps. (when you least expect them) I kept all the staples from all my surgeries and made my (ex)wife a bracelet.

3. My first serious Radiated Iodine Treatment. Wow scary stuff. Let me see if I understand you correctly? For 30 days I can not have any salt or anything cooked where I don’t know if they used salt to make it, prepare it, package it (depleting my body of iodine)… then I am going to check into the hospital, I am to swallow this pill. This pill that if I throw it up I am going to have to be scrubbed like Karen Silkwood. This pill that I cannot touch with my hand. You going to isolate me in a lead room at the hospital for a week, save, bag and put in a barrel everything I touch, and I cant keep anything I take in with the room with me? Then when I am “safe” to go home, I can not sleep next to my (ex)wife, hug my daughter or even have dinner at the kitchen table? For a while? A while? Is that a medical term?

They take me to my cell, I mean room. Its not lead lined. It has lead chalkboard looking panels on wheels lining the wall that faces the next room (empty I’m told) and it is in the far corner of the hospital. The whole room is papered in brown craft paper and blue painters tape. Everything is covered. Walls, floor, table, chair, bed frame. Everything. The Nuclear tech (hope they pay this kid well) comes in his lead x-ray vest wheeling a cart, holding what looks like a really heavy lead thermos. He is wearing blue surgery gloves. He grabs these foot long tongs, screws open the bottle, reaches in and grabs the pill. He says open up. I want to check out the pill. He barks “open your mouth and swallow quickly please!” I do. I get a glimpse of the pill, it didn’t appear to be glowing or green. It looked aluminum (stainless steel) in color. It was big (207 millicurries). About the size of one a day vit-a-min. I swallowed. He checked my mouth. Said what ever you do DO NOT THROW UP. DO NOT. So know that’s all I can think about. Is how I feel like I am going to throw up. I feel queasy. But ok. Time goes slow. I finally get some sleep. Wake up in the morning (about 8 hours now form ingestion), feeling really queasy. I really think I am going to throw up now. I my stomach is tight, my head is rolling. I feel like I just went fishing in a ocean boat and am standing on the dock after being on the boat for 4 hours.

Knock-knock. Breakfast time. The nurse drops breakfast outside the door and runs. Literally. I am instructed to wait 3-4 minutes then retrieve my food quickly. Eggs. Pancakes. Toast. Coffee. Sausage. Nothing ever looked so unappetizing in my life. Don’t get me wrong the food was great, but there was no way I could eat a bite. I just stared at it. Time keeps going slowly.

Hey it’s the Nuke Tech. Hey ! He’s got a real life Geiger counter. He opens the door. Tic tic tic… he closes the door (Yes I too wish I could remember the readings? I have no idea.) He gives me thumbs up through the door window and leaves.

More food. I don’t touch it either. I have two big rolls of plastic bags. I double bag it and drop it in the barrel they provided in the corner. I should mention, that I was allowed to use the toilet in the roof, just not allowed to shower.

Hours stretch into days. I feel like crap. I feel dizzy. My stomach is tight all the time. My skin itches. My eyes were blurry. I remember this because I could not read the two paperbacks’ I brought and I was mad. I did not lose my hair. I did not show any signs of sickness to an outside observer. I just felt like laying down and closing my eyes. All I wanted to do.

The nuke tech checks me once a day with the Geiger counter. He starts staying in the doorway for a few minutes and talking to me. I forgot to mention, he uses a yard stick (yes a wooden yardstick) he holds it touching my chest and hold the Geiger counter at the other end (36” away even with my chest) He tells me everyday I’m still too hot to go home. That’s good cause that means my body absorbed lots of the radiation. That’s bad because my body absorbed lots of the radiation. Drink lots of water. Lots and lots of water, your body expels radiation through urine and sweat he reminds me. Keep Peeing! After 7 days, of which I finally started eating bits of my lunch, but not much, It all tasted like sucking on a nail. Everything tasted metallic (for weeks after) I finally got to go home.

At home I could not sleep next to my wife, not be close to the kids for any length of time, had to use separate drinking and eating utensils. My stuff could not be washed with the other household goods. All my laundry had to be done separate. I had to use a separate toilet. I had to urinate sitting down (most of the radiation comes out in sweat and urine) so as not to splash contaminate anything. This went on for 30 days. Then life got back to normal for couple of months.


I could copy and paste the above scenario 3x. After the first round of treatment and radiated Iodine, my California doctors kicked me to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (Go Longhorns !) My cancer was just too advanced.

4. 2008 CT scans, testing, Surgery, Radiated Iodine. (my taste takes longer to recover each time, everything tastes like metal for months!)

5. 2009 CT scans, testing, Surgery, Radiated Iodine.

6. Tight beam radiation. I would strongly suggest anyone having cancer treatment think long and hard about having this procedure. The surgeries and radiated iodine were a walk in the park compared to this. They build a mask that covered my face and chest to hold me perfectly still. The for 40 days I stopped by each morning, got strapped in a machine for 35 minutes while a robot arm zoomed here and there shooting radiation in to my neck and throat. It burned off the lining of my esophagus, burned the skin off my neck, killed my saliva glands, killed couple of teeth, killed one side of my vocal cord, I could not swallow so much as water without it feeling like pouring thumbtacks down my throat. And that was how I felt after day 20. 20 more treatments to go. Yippy !. I did them all. I hated it. It probably saved my life. Or at least extended it. Would I do the tight beam again? Probably not. I had to have a feeding tube for months (via a valve in my stomach), I lost some hair behind my ear. (looks like I have a bad haircut!) The missing saliva glands are the worst. Hard to eat a lot of stuff now. Especially anything dry. Bread. Tortillas. Pork chops. French fries.

It was just after the beam radiation, that Blue Cross discovered I was living in Texas and not California and canceled my insurance without notice. Funny it wasn’t a secret, because all my doctors changed. My hospital changed. All my bills were going to the Texas address for 2 years…


7. So that’s where I am now. Needing to get back down to MD Anderson for another round of testing. They want a $4,500.00 deposit or health insurance. (I still don’t support nat’l health plan) So as soon as I get some more things settled here, I will get back on track with that. Just got busy with life.

Me? I am 42 years old. Healthy. (I think) and other then the cool neck scars and radiation burns up the side of my neck, a fairly handsome guy. I have a great girlfriend (divorced after beam therapy), getting ready to get married on June 6th, run a not for profit horse rescue ranch in Austin. Still have lots of cancer in my lungs, but it grows real slow and its been radiated over an over. Most of the cancer in my old thyroid bed and lymph nodes is gone. Just a lot of scar tissue and patches inside there.

secondchanceranch.tripod.com... (if anyone’s interested in adopting a horse!)

If you made it this far… get a life !! kidding. Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, throw them my way. I am pretty open about it.

Thanks for reading
Dennis

Dennis.. wow.. and welcome

Ive seen you survivors before.. dealt with them. Like one guy said," the grim reaper isnt such a bad guy, until he comes to visit twice a year" Youll be a great asset to ATS.