The name is very misleadingly dramatic. It makes you think of tubes full of glowing liquids being injected into people and then maybe they get really sick with radiation poisoning or something. It kinda sounds like something that freak Mengele would have been up to. Or it's the kind of thing that you think would bequeath super powers.
It's so not and it so doesn't.
It's about THE most subtle medicine I've ever received--and I've been around that internal medicine block a few times. At most, I'd say nuclear med is "inconvenient"--at least the bit that I've experienced. The diet is annoying--though the key to survival there is making your own bread. Wow, what a difference.
They brought in a lead canister today and instructed me to remove the plastic vial inside. Inside of the vial, in turn, was a white capsule. Didn't look all that different from a tylenol gelcap. I had to drop the pill into my mouth directly from the vial and then drink the cup of water they gave me. Instructed not to eat anything for 45 minutes, they turned me loose on the unsuspecting world. As I walked back to my car, I thought, "How boring."
That being said, I've just taken 5 millicuries of the isotope Iodine-131, and am emitting a combination of gamma-rays and beta particles--mostly gamma, though. Conceptually, that does feel a little weird.
I-131 has a half-life of roughly 8 days (compared with the half-life of I-129 with a half-life of 15.7 million years, and I-123 and its half-life of 13.2 hours. The shortest half life belongs to a type of I-130--133 nanoseconds. What a difference a few neutrons can make!). I'm not supposed to let the dog spend a lot of time on my lap, lest his tiny thyroid be impacted.
For the next 8 days, I'm gonna be a whole new kind of "hot".
So try not to rub up against me.
wait! Im confused. What was the stuff they gave you in the hospital? For like 28 hrs. you were locked away. wasnt that I-131? What is this I-131 suppose to do? Please help me like me who don't understand medicine.
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