PREVIEW

WORDS BYLINE: Lucy Younger

Every relationship has a moment when it's put to the test. How about telling your partner you are radioactive and she has to sleep in the hallway? Here student Lucy Younger, 24, reveals a side to cancer treatment that is rarely talked about.
It can be a lonely place when you're told you have cancer. Endless trips to hospital. Surgery. Constant uncertainty about the future.
I'm not new to this. I've been trying to get on with my life since I was first diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 20. I had various MRI scans, was put on different epilepsy medications and ended up having a craniotomy, surgery that removes part of the skull to get into the brain.
So, I thought I'd seen it all. Well, I hadn't.
When the doctors at 23 diagnosed me with a thyroid tumour a year ago, I knew I would have to go through surgery again.
I was correct; this time, I needed two surgeries to remove my thyroid and subsequent radiotherapy.
But then I was told the radiotherapy I needed was radio-iodine therapy. To begin with, I thought it was just a tablet, and I remember thinking it was a great and easy treatment.
Not for a second did I think it involved being placed into a room secured with two lead-lined doors, minimal human contact, and my main electronics being clingfilmed to stop radioactive contamination.
So, what exactly was radioactive? Actually, it was me.
That's right, the treatment, which involved a long tube with a tiny tablet that I had to swallow without touching it, meant I was a risk to anyone who came near me.
For four days, I was alone in a room with only my clingfilmed mobile phone for company.
I passed the time by staring out into the 13th floor view of London I had, I can almost recite the skyline now.
UCLH, the hospital where I had my treatment is renowned for its’ views and luckily in my situation, I was not summoned to a basement like a lot of people are for this treatment.
Still, instead, I was behind two lead-lined doors on an oncology ward high up in the sky. My screen time went up to over 6 hours daily, as I spent time mindlessly scrolling TikTok, reading news stations and messaging my friends on my clingfilmed phone whilst my neck was swollen and in pain from the treatment.
My phone got clingfilmed to stop radioactive contamination, but this didn’t stop my phone case from being put in the radioactive waste bin at the end of my stay, along with most of my belongings that I took in with me – which was minimal, as you are told before you go in not to bring much. I had with me some cleaning products, a body wash, one pair of pyjamas, my mobile and a charger that also did not survive its stay.
Despite how nauseous I felt throughout my stay due to the treatment, I also spent a lot of time showering to speed up the process as I was told the radioactivity came out through sweat glands, so ideally, the more you showered, the quicker you could leave the hospital.
I was also, in this situation, one of the luckier ones as I had epilepsy, which meant I was allowed a family member to come and check on me from behind the door. I don’t think anyone has ever put the word lucky and epilepsy together before until now.
However, it meant I saw my mum behind a door every day. She would fill me in on her day, bring me a “Tunacado” sandwich from Jo & the Juice, put her PPE clothing on, and place it on the designated tray right by the door, where I would go grab it quickly.
We would do our best to chat from my bed, at least three metres away from the door she was behind until she had to leave because her radiation monitor would become too high.
As time went on, I started to feel less and less like a human and more like an experiment, reminding myself that this treatment was saving my life. I lost my appetite there unless my mum delivered me a little treat from the outside world, but getting food into the room was hard.
Everything, including pain or anti-sickness medication, was placed on a black tray by the door, which I would have to walk over to and get myself. I almost felt as though I was in trouble, even though all the staff members were so lovely, and we would have a little joke about the situation.
But that was not the end of it.
On discharge day, after four days 'solitary', the physics team handed me a little yellow card with my “restrictions”, and I instantly saw the one that noted I could not share a bed with anyone for at least NINE days.
This would be a challenge as a twenty-four-year-old living in a 2-bed flat in Southeast London. My mum and my partner most definitely needed to avoid contact with me, and once again, I was left feeling more like an alien than a person.
This also made getting home interesting; we were told we could have 1 hour of public transport or get an Uber but to sit apart. We opted for Uber as we spent less time in it, but it meant all wearing masks and sitting as far away from each other as humanly possible.
As my mum had been exposed to radioactivity, she had to go into a bedroom, which meant my partner had to sleep in the hallway.
However, due to my seizures, Ellie (my partner) needed to be able to keep an eye on me. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves other than laugh before those giggles turned to tears.
At twenty-four, you do not expect to find yourself radio-active and to see your partner sleeping in the hallway to protect herself.
My partner explained the experience as: “Lonely and bittersweet as my girlfriend was home, but she wasn’t really home, and no one really teaches you what to do when someone has radioactivity in their body other than to stay away.”
She added: “Epilepsy made it harder; while Lucy has temporal lobe epilepsy, you still want to hold your partner’s hand whilst they're having a seizure, but we were warned by the team that it could affect my fertility or put me at a higher risk of getting cancer so I just had to watch her have seizures. That was hard.”
You don’t think it will ever be you, especially in your twenties. Neither you nor your partner are prepared to go through something so life-changing, and it strained our relationship. You watch your friends in your relationships go on nights out together or go on couples’ holidays.
Instead, we’re preparing for one of us to go into cancer treatment and navigating living arrangements. From sleeping in hallways to not being able to hug each other would test even the strongest marriages, let alone a young relationship.
But this is the reality of living with cancer. It's not just the patient. It's the lives of those you love too.
After a long two weeks, I returned to get my levels checked and I am no longer radioactive so I have been able to hug my partner. My mum, after also having been exposed to a bit of radioactivity and isolating for a couple of days, has gone home back to my little sister, who was not able to come up due to the treatment being too dangerous for her to be around.
Radio-iodine therapy is an isolating cancer treatment to go through that does not get the same media attention that say chemotherapy gets.
Therefore, it is easy to go in and not know what to expect or to know how it may affect you or your relationship. This is why I took to TikTok to document my experience and to hold space for a treatment that does not get much attention in the cancer space.
For my information and advice on radio-iodine therapies, MacMillian Radio-iodine is a great resource