Darrell's preparation for his radiation treatment

Sunday, March 2nd, was the last day that Darrell took the medicine Cytomel. Cytomel is a thyroid hormone. It works by replacing or supplementing the natural thyroid hormones in your body.

He began a low-iodine diet on Monday. This is a little different from a low-sodium diet, but most of the items that he can eat are low in sodium, anyway. He can't eat or drink any dairy product or any seafood (which he won't miss anyway since he was allergic to shrimp already). He can only have about 5 or 6 ounces of meat each day and very little bread.

Why is he on this diet? They are trying to get him to have as little iodine in his body as possible before the radiation treatment. His radiation will be swallowing a radioactive iodine pill. He still has some thyroid tissue left in his body (and it is cancerous) and when he swallows that pill, the iodine will search out the body for the thyroid. Thyroid cells are the ONLY cells in the body which are able to absorb iodine. Iodine is a vital trace mineral which is found in food.

So, when he swallows that pill and it searches out to find the remaining traces of thyroid tissue in his body, the radioactive materials that are in the pill will KILL the remaining cancer cells in his body.

He will have to go into the hospital and stay for about 48 hours. The date of that treatment is March 17th. About a week later they will do a body scan to see how well the radioactive iodine treatment did. We're praying for a "clean sweep" and being cancer-free! PTL!

As far as his voice, on a scale of 1 - 100, he's back at about 35% of his volume. You can actually hear him now, and he's not whispering. Thank the Lord! We'll be hearing his voice again FULL VOLUME real soon!

I'll report more on the specifics of the treatment in a few more days.

Thanks for your prayers. We couldn't have made it without them! We know that God has a purpose for everything that happens in our lives and we are thanking God for all that he has accomplished throughout this whole ordeal. There are a LOT of good things that have happened and we have so much to be thankful for!

Vickey