RA Issues ??

sunnyaz said:

Hi Wendy
Hi Wendy,

I have had the thyrogen injections (six in total). I always have them in the glute (hip area; otherwise known as the butt) muscle. It doesn't hurt as much as in the arm afterward. I did have a bit of a headache after my first so I took Ibuprofen half an hour before each subsequent injection to prevent this and it worked. No other side effects. I went back to work after all of them.

The RAI did cause some minor mouth issues on my second treatment. I had some swelling in my salivary glands after my second RAI (178 mCi's). My Nuclear Medicine doctor gave me steroids to take on the first, second and third day. I don't think this is standard procedure however. It did work for me though. I had my last RAI on February 4th and I have no lingering effects. The soreness only lasted a day and then for about a week afterward I couldn't eat certain foods without getting a strange taste in my mouth. I didn't have any nausea just a bit of tenderness in my muscles especially in the neck area. Again, I took Ibuprofen and it relieved the pain along with hard sour candies to promote salivation.

Suck on lots of hard candies to prevent swelling in the salivary glands, drink plenty of fluids to move the RAI through your body. Be careful not to drink so much water that it makes you nauseated though.

You are going to be fine. Enjoy the time alone and catch up on some TV, sleep and reading. It will go by fast. Best wishes for a healing treatment.

God Bless,
Julie-SunnyAZ

Baldy said:

Day 2
Two more pokes, man I hate needles, I had more pre-poke anxiety today then I've had in months. I have no idea what brings this on. Anyway, neither was painful, {until it came time to remove the bandaid and some hair with it,} and I had no whoozyness with either.

There didn't seem to be any post TSH injection problems. I guess yesterday's shakiness was psychosematic or maybe you don't have a reaction to the second shot.

There were no special instructions with the I-123 dose [2 mCi]. They said the dose was too small and I-123 decays too quickly {13 hour half-life compared to 8 days for I-131} to take any precautions. The only surprise was it was in 10 capsules, I assumed there would be one capsule. But applying physics to the problem, it's understandable. Unless the I-123 was prepared just before I took it, half of it would be decaying every 13 hours. If it were prepared 4 days & 8 hours ago, {just an example, I don't know,} it'd have something like 1/256th of it's original radioactivity. The rest of the Iodine-123 would have decayed into Tellurium-123. Tellurium-123 is also radioactive but has a very very long half-life {13,000,000,000,000 years} and it's metabolized and excreted anyway.

Alan