Post Treatment and Increased Clumsiness

The thing with radio-iodine treatment, is you don’t actually feel unwell whilst you’re having it. The worst I felt was the following day when I woke up that morning feeling like I had the mumps.  Either side of my face was swollen, and it hurt a bit, I felt a bit sick and I was really thirsty.  I’d been prepared for this though, radioiodine can affect the salivary gland temporarily, so I took some paracetamol, drank loads and ate sour Haribo sweets, which stimulate saliva and made me feel much better.

What I didn’t realise was that Radioiodine would make me clumsier than I already am.  Nothing is ever straight forward with me.  I am the clumsiest person you will meet.  Just to set the scene here my clumsiest moment happened at Uni where I spent my final year living in a flat.  There was a dodgy guy that lived on the ground floor (dodgy but stupid) and the Police were always coming to have a “talk” with him. One day, I answered the door to two plain clothed Police…I was hungover, in my pyjamas and wearing giant pig slippers.  As I left them in the hallway to go about their business, I ran up the stairs, tripped and slid all the way back down to the bottom of the stairs…both pig slippers had shot off my feet, which the Police Officers had caught.  They both picked me up and set me back on my feet before handing me my slippers.  I was mortified, but also unsurprised by this event…this was pretty normal for me.

Sadly, I have not improved over the years and being cooped up in the radioiodine room only seemed to add to my clumsiness. The shower was the main issue, I had to shower twice a day to remove as much radioactivity as possible but each time I showered I somehow managed to create a tidal wave, which would run the entire length of the bathroom.  For the first few times I didn’t really notice anything odd until one day, post-shower I saw something shiny on the floor.  The tidal wave was seeping under the bathroom door and slowly travelling across my room and out towards the main door.  I was unable to step beyond a point in the room and the water was now past this point and out of my reach.  It had pooled around my shoes and was now heading out into the corridor.  All I could do was sit guiltily in my chair and hope nobody noticed.  I didn’t say a word.  The following day I tried really hard not to create a tidal wave, but this meant being left with scorching hot water, I tried to make the water cooler, but this just increased the water pressure, which caused the shower head to spin off the wall and soak the entire bathroom.  This time I was ready though…armed with paper towels I was able to create a dam and stop the fast-flowing river that was now making its way over to my shoes again and back out of the door.

Every day was a battle to try and stop the tidal wave or make sure I didn’t give myself third degree burns and wind up in A&E…but then I couldn’t go to A&E because I was bloody radioactive! I was turning into a nightmare.  I sat that evening after my shower and watched a film called Lady Bird, which I loved but it made me cry.  I was feeling pretty emotional by this point, what with the tidal wave and the staff losing my lunch (I was compensated with a potato) I was at my lowest and desperate to go home.  I grabbed my tablet and sent the plate on my tray spinning in the air, across the room like a Frisbee where it landed with an almighty crash and broke into a thousand pieces. I waited for the staff to come rushing in…but I was in a radioactive room and the door and walls are solid, so nobody came.  I got down on my hands and knees to pick every last piece up.  Just as I placed the last piece in the bin an alarm started to ring out.  An annoying continuous beep that seemed to be coming from a sensor in my room.  They knew…the tidal wave, the plate, everything...was this a signal that I had broken all the rules and needed to be removed from the building before I created anymore havoc. Had the water finally trickled into an area that it shouldn’t, and somebody had pulled a cord. 

The alarm continued, I paced around the room and tried to look outside but every time I did, I head-butted the window again.  I was radioactive, I was not allowed to leave the room and I was wearing my pyjamas…and following my shower of red-hot lava I was now the colour of the inside of a watermelon! Nobody came, the alarm continued, and I searched around the room for guidance as to what to do.  There was no guidance…if I wanted to know how to work the TV then we were all good but the building burning down, forget it I was toast! 

I continued to pace and waved at the Nurse kitting himself out in PPE through the window in the door, but he didn’t see me and hurried away.  I balanced on the line that I’d been told never to cross, waiting for a fireman in a Hamzat suit to burst in and carry me out to safety…where he would remove his helmet and reveal himself to be indeed Henry Cavill.  I quickly ran to buzz the nurse who ran in five minutes later to tell me it was all OK, there was no emergency but a fault in the fire system.  Somebody was trying to fix it, but they’d gone all around the ward and then forgotten to come and tell me.  This did not bode well if there was an actual fire! But needless to say, there would be no Fireman Henry coming to rescue me…I was still stuck here for at least another 24 hours dammit! 

I suppose being clumsy has some advantages, it did pass the time on… and it had ended up an eventful Saturday despite being locked up in my room. I managed to get through Sunday without any major mishaps, apart from the shower spinning off the wall again. On Monday they came at 9am prompt and walked me down for my scan, feeling very uncomfortable as I was now completely braless having forgotten to isolate my bra, which was now radioactive and a danger to humankind! Anybody who has had children, will understand that this is not a good look…they never go back to where they came from so, I self-consciously made my way through the hospital like Gwyneth Paltrow…free and easy, trying to keep everything above my waistline and not knocking a passer-by out with my unruly boobs!

The scanner was terrifying, it looked like Flight of the Navigator. I had to lie in the middle whilst a robot travelled towards my face and stopped at the tip of my nose.  It moved around my head, at one point there were lasers, and the noise was like a jet engine.  The only way to get through it was to lie back, keep my eyes tightly closed and imagine I was travelling First Class on a fancy flatbed to New Zealand.  It’s probably the closest I will ever get to first class travel, but I made it, ninety minutes later I arrived at my destination, Costa where I ordered a Cappuccino with proper milk and all the cake! It was time to go home.