I was talking to some folks about this on another forum. One guy there works in radiology, so he was talking about his experiences with this at work.
I found it kind of interesting. Sorta makes me take the precautions list a little more seriously. He told me I wasn't silly for doing rubber gloves last night.
Quote:
Any iodine-131 you ingest will go straight to your thyroid and can cause you all kinds of problems if it's a healthy thyroid, especially if it's a child. When I do room surveys after a patient leaves from an iodine ablation. One of the hottest things they leave behind is almost always their toothbrush. The styrofoam cups are almost as hot followed by the bed linens. The half life of Iodine-131 is 8.1 hrs, but the biological half life is less. I can usually release a patient in 3 days after an ablation if they take lots of showers and drink lots of fluids. The dose for an ablation is between 100 mCi and 250 mCi. If it's 250 they usually stay 4 days cause that's a really hot dose. I just had a patient released yesterday though that was in for a week, because he was old and didn't drink or take showers, so he had to decay down.
The toothbrush and cup thing seemed really interesting. I'd like to see that!
My dose was only 15 mCi for reference.
btw, my avatar over there:
Also, sleeping alone sucked. The blinds in our spare bedroom don't block out light very well. lol our poor overnight guests. 
