Silly me.  I passed Starbucks on the way home and had some sips of coffee.  I called the clinic in a panic.  They said it was okay :)  Well, I went back and they did 2 things.  First, I sat in a chair while they pointed a tube at my neck.  The technician did some stuff on a computer.  This took maybe 5 minutes.  The second thing was in another room where there was a large machine that I lay underneath.  While the technician sat at her computer, the machine pointed at my neck from three different angles.  This part took about 10 minutes.  For both procedures, I did not feel anything.  I couldn't even tell they were doing anything at all.  She explained to me that the first part was the four hour uptake test (to see how much iodine my thyroid had taken in at this point) and the second part was some imaging to check for abnormalities in the gland itself.

The next day, I went back and they repeated the uptake portion of the test.  They did not repeat the scan.  While waiting to see a physician, I met a couple of women sitting in the waiting room and we shared stories about our experience with this disease.  One woman was younger than me.  She had not done any reading and was pretty uninformed about the whole procedure.  She was planning on heading back to work after the treatment and also discussed planning on trying to get pregnant in the near future.  I told her that the doctor would advise against this.  The other woman talked about how she had lost so much weight and felt warm all the time but then it disappeared for awhile before coming back.  She also had some other health problems but had a pretty optimistic outlook about it.

When they called me in, I sat down and talked to the doctor about the treatment.  He said that my uptake was about 80% at 4 hours (normal is under 30%).  They didn't even bother looking at the 24 hour because the first one was so high.  He asked me if I had any questions, which of course I did, and he answered me basically with these precautions:  For the next 3-5 days,

• act as if you have a bad cold: do not get closer than a meter to anyone else for any amount of time
• avoid contact with pregnant women or children <5 years old
• flush the toilet twice (ideally, use a separate bathroom)
• use separate cutlery and dishes; do not share food
• drink lots of fluids
• do not sleep in the same room as another individual
• avoid pregnancy for 6 months after

Shortly after, I sat behind a small table where a technician put a big thick mug-like lead container in front of me.  In that was the radioactive iodine "drink" in a little plastic tube.  I was given a straw to drink the small amount of the clear, tasteless liquid.  Then she squirted some plain water into the container a few times while I also drank that.  That was it.

I spent that day at home trying to figure out what to do with myself.  I couldn't really hang out with anyone and Caitlin was at Grandma's.