We just got Stan home from the MSPCA hospital. He’s been there for three weeks while his radioactivity levels fell from highly dangerous levels to merely regular dangerous.
Today’s highest reading: 41.7 µS/hr from the area around his throat. That’s more than four thousand times higher than the typical background levels in my house.
Background
Stan was treated for an overactive thyroid. The modern procedure is to inject the patient with a single dose of Iodine 131 to kill off the hyperactive cells. The normal thyroid cells are generally unaffected because they’ve gone dormant and don’t take up any of the iodine.
For the first three weeks post-treatment Stan was kept at the facility for monitoring but, more importantly, because his pee and poop were strongly radioactive and cannot be disposed of with normal trash. We would have had to hold onto it for 90+ days.
I’m planning on taking daily readings using my Better Geiger S1 scintillator until his levels drop to near-background levels, which are under 0.01 µS/hr in my house.
