ivyblossom | Awaiting Superpowers

As anticipated, I survived the isolation. It wasn't exactly boring. Mostly it was just...strange. The room is terribly stark and empty, with absorbent papers taped in a walkway between the bed and the bathroom, like the sort of thing you might put down for a house training puppy. Chairs were covered in the stuff, table tops. I felt like a plague victim.

I drank a lot of water, ate most of what they gave me to eat, except when I started to feel nauseated (a feeling that hasn't entirely passed), and I spent most of the time with a splitting headache. I'm not sure if that's the result of the radiation or the weather; we had a terrible storm while I was in there, and I have a history of reacting badly to rapid, extreme barometric changes. But either way, my head was aching and my eyes were sore, which made it harder than anticipated to just sit and read. I slept a lot.

I discovered late in the game that I was on the oncology ward. It's not a surprise anymore that I am an attendee at camp cancer, but somehow it still threw me when I learned this. Not only was I in a room for people undergoing a particular kind of radiation, I was in a room for people in exactly my circumstances. I felt like another heir to a particularly rigid throne.

My radioactivity reading was already very low when I left the hospital, which I take to mean that there wasn't much left in my body to process idoine anyway, so it was flushed out relatively quickly.

No superpowers detected as yet.

I still recommend the salt scrub, and nice smelling soaps and shampoo and whatnot, to anyone going into isolation. The place is so austere, it's nice to have something entirely frivolous, sort of aromatherapy to enjoy. There's very little to enjoy in that environment.

At this point I feel pretty done with hospitals. Been there, done that. I'd like that on the official record; check that ticky box, I don't need to do this again, thanks.

My body temperature is two and a half degrees below normal, which is a bit uncomfortable, but strangely you get used to it. I'm turning a little bit reptilian.

I'm in this cold and sleepy state for another week. Next Monday I go in for a full body scan, which will look for any remains of the radioactive iodine I took, and will, I presume, clear me of any further suspicion of cancer. And then, blessed be, I can take some thyroid replacement. My endocrinologist, bless her heart, gave me an initial dose that she thinks will be slightly more than I actually need.

That's helpful, since I'm getting married three days later.

I like to keep my major life events all clustered around the same time, just for excitement and giggles.