Radioactive Wife

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Jon Rosenstiel
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Radioactive Wife

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

Earlier this week my wife underwent a dual isotope stress test. Isotopes used were technetium-99m (referred to as Cardiolite in the linked article) and thallium-201. http://www.cvmg.com/nuclear.aspx

When she returned home (~2.5 hours after the nuclear cocktails had been administered) I had her step in front of a 3” x 3” NaI detector I had set-up for the occasion. I hit the MCA’s collect button and immediately its dead-time indicator pegged out at 100%, and did not return until I rebooted the MCA. I finally managed to get a gamma spectrum with my wife standing 8-feet from the detector. Even at that distance the dead-time indicator was hovering around 60%, three times the maximum recommended dead-time. At that point I gave up on the NaI detector…its resolution was just not good enough to resolve the closely spaced Tc-99m / Tl-201 gamma peaks. It was time to break out the HPGe detector so it was off to the local welding shop for a Dewar full of LN.

While the HPGe detector was cooling down (~ 5 hours) I scanned the wife with various detectors I have on hand. The GM pancake probe was useless; even on the x1000 range it pegged the meter. The “Cutie-pie” ion chamber detector turned out to work the best. Eight-hours after the nuclear cocktails had been administered I located a “hot-spot” on the right side of my wife’s midriff (ascending colon, I believe) that registered a whopping 50 mR / hr. I gotta’ wonder what the Cutie-pie would have registered had I checked this same area immediately after the procedure when the 6.01-hour Tc-99m was still fresh.

By eight in the evening (~11-hours after the nuclear cocktail had been administered) the HPGe detector had cooled down and was ready to go. My wife stood 10-feet from the detector and I started a 60-second count. Even at 10-feet the MCA’s dead time, at 27%, was a little on the high side.

Ok, on to the wife’s gamma spectra.

Upper chart: Three 60-second runs at a wife to detector distance of 10-feet taken at +11, +24, and +48 hours after the administration of the nuclear cocktails. At 140.5 keV the decay of 6-hour Tc-99m is quite evident. Of interest is the striking effect this has on the Compton continuum. Also of interest are the strong Hg x-rays from Tl-201’s electron capture decay. Of particular interest is the astonishing fact that Tc-99m (in the +11-hour spectrum) racked up over 21,000 counts in one-minute at a source to detector distance of 10-feet!

Lower chart: Two five-minute runs at a wife to detector distance of 4-feet. At +72 hours (12 half-lives) Tc-99m is just a shadow of its former self. 26-hour Tl-200 and 12-day Tl-202 are contaminants in cyclotron produced Tl-201.

Jon R
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Mike Beauford
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by Mike Beauford »

Hi Jon,

Your wife is hot! (Sorry, I had to say that!). Hope everything is ok with the misses.

Mike
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Richard Hull
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by Richard Hull »

Yes, Our wives were hot once. I reported on my experiences in past postings, (2006) on this and really appreciate you update with the HpGe tests.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5711&hilit=wife#p34155

I had a friend who was dating a lady and they had to kill her thyroid with Iodine 131.
She was ordered not to go to work for a week and to not sleep with or stay near any individual for longer than 1 hour. He borrowed my geiger counter to check her out, but as he came close enough to read, it saturated the tube to a zero count three days after the cocktail was administered!

Another man I know had to check into a motel for a few days as his wife had the same thing done.

Stress tests and the like for diagnostics are very mild compared to those thyroid killer dosings.

It just shows that even diagnostic doses internal to the body are way stronger than the hottest external U rock or other source we will ever have. In almost all cases of diagnostic dosings they will not speak of lingering radioactivity to the patient or if they do, they interject that it is mild and will be gone by the end of the day. (not so, of course)

I am curious....Did they discuss this with your wife? California may force such disclosures. My wife was told nothing here in Virginia!!

It just shows how much the body can take internally. I am glad what little I get is all external and but a microscopic fraction of what our gals got.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Carl Willis
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by Carl Willis »

Hi Jon,

Hope your wife's results on the stress test are OK.

Interesting observations with the LOAX. In my experiences hunting hot stuff at hamfests and flea markets, I've frequently been foiled by human-derived signals. A person who's just had a heart stress test, walking around in public against the doctor's orders, can be a showstopper, blowing away a scintillator from the other side of the room. I'll bet you could take some pretty interesting autoradiographs if you had a supply of x-ray film.

-Carl
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Jon Rosenstiel
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

Richard,

They told my wife nothing. What little information she did pick up came from listening in to a conversation between a tech and someone else that was having the same stress test done.

Jon R
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by bpaddock »

Something that I wonder about: Did their Thyroid enlarge because
it was trying to pump the needed T4 into their body, but it could
not because the T3 was not being processed (There is a conversion
from T4 that the Thyroid makes to T3 that the body uses)? A bad
closed loop cycle. Thyroid issues are frequently problems
elsewhere in the body, rather than a malfunctioning Thyroid
itself.

Insert the medical disclaimer of your choice here, always
get a second or third opinion, preferably across different
disciplines, like an allergist.

Bob Paddock
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Richard Hull
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by Richard Hull »

I have several other friends who were also not informed. My wife has personal friends also not informed, as well. I think this falls into the category of "too much information" for the medicos.

The rule is just quietly infuse the atom juice and let the sleeping dog remain in repose.

I have had one girl get very upset at me for telling her following a stress test. She refused to let me show her just how hot she was. I, wisely, demurred from pressing the issue.

It is amazing how little folks know about stuff the docs do to their persons.

I have always been very careful in matters related to radiation. Such care is based on knowledge acquired over my many years and much reading. I have seen blisteringly hot dials and U rocks, but little prepared me for the diagnostic and clinical levels of radiation daily administered intravenously and allowed to course through the body and every organ in it! Admittedly it is short lived, but internally??!! That's the worst of all dosings, damage wise.

Admittedly, I would rather have a few millicuries of I 131 inside me that a single microcurie of radium so lodged, but, externally, I would rather suffer the radium any day.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Richard Hull
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by Richard Hull »

My wife was already pretty pissed off over my amusement at her being a source, that I figured I shouldn't ask to collect it lest I draw back a stump.

She still speaks ill of me to our friends over the incident, noting she was fine with the test until she found out how radioactive she was. Oh, she is fine with it now, using it as a point of self amusement at my cost, but at the time, she was not a happy camper.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
SteveZ
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Re: Radioactive Wife

Post by SteveZ »

So you might say she got two stress test for the price of one ... sorry just couldn't help my self.

I got a stress test run last year myself. I used that to test my cutie pie ion chamber functionallity! Seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Again, I was not told much about the test and/or possible issues. Being incurably curious I read up on everything I could find about Technetium-99m and the stress test, and asked numerous questions during the test. I suspect that I knew nearly as much about the radio source as they did, including where they got the Technetium in the first place.
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