Hi Nikki,
This answer might come after you’ve resolved everything, but I wanted to make sure we had a good, basic response to the reasons behind the restrictions, because that helped me understand the differences of opinion that have occurred over the years — I had RAI in 1999, and I’ve seen some places that relax the restrictions I was told to observe, seen others that have even further restriction. Here are the basic elements to the restrictions.
First, there are two different types of exposure that occur for an RAI patient.
At first, when you take the RAI, your body takes a certain percentage of it up into the thyroid, and the remaining RAI is flushed out of your system within the first 48 hours, primarily through the fluid waste systems (saliva, urine, sweat). For those first 48 hours, restrictions will attempt to limit others’ exposure to your saliva, urine, or sweat, as the minute bits of RAI that may be within those fluids could, theoretically, be taken up into another person’s thyroid, if they ingested it, which could destroy part of their thyroid. Nothing like what the RAI patient expects to experience, but it could reduce thyroid function in a healthy person, so we attempt to make that exposure impossible. This is why we don’t share utensils, prepare food for others, and why we flush twice after urinating. It’s also the reason behind instructions to drink lots of fluids and urinate often — to get the excess flushed out as quickly as possible, and dilute the amount in the urine as much as possible.
After that first 48 hours, there is still radiation within your thyroid, and then that exposure becomes the primary issue. RAI has a half-life of 8 days, so every 8 days, the amount in your system is reduced by half. You can look at your dose level and make some calculations to figure out when the amount of radiation within your system is truly infinitesimal and no longer an issue. In the meantime, my doctor told me the rule was to consider time, and distance, in exposing others. You need to consider how near you hold someone (or a pet) near your neck — if you are going to be with someone for a long period of time, you should keep your distance in order to limit their exposure. If you need to be very, very near someone, limit the amount of time. Radiation is something that our body “builds up” over a lifetime, so the idea is just to minimize anyone’s exposure in order to limit the lifetime “dose.” Any excess exposure won’t create an immediate emergency, but may add up over a lifetime.
I hope that helps!
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