I am full of...

[cjsmith]

...technitium-99. (This is for a triphase bone scan.) The half life is six hours, so in a day I'll be back to normal background; in the meantime I shouldn't try to fly at a commercial airport.

Naturally this got me wondering about the medical supply of an isotope whose half life is six hours. El Camino Hospital probably has a moly cow. I get to go back for the bone portion of the scan in a couple of hours, so I'll ask.

I love asking medical people about things. Techs either love me or hate me. :-)

Comments

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

It's particularly odd that 99(m)Tc, which is what you have in you, doesn't actually decay into another element. It just has an excited nucleus (woohoo!) and it either emits a gamma ray or transfers energy to an orbit electron, which then flees, but in either case it stays 99Tc (the non-(m) version).

This means, for the reader who's paying attention, that you aren't emitting neutrinos from this decay. However, 99Tc has a half-life of 211,100 years, and does beta decay, thus releasing neutrinos, into 99Ru, which is stable. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to whether you are emitting more or fewer neutrinos from 99Tc decay than a banana does from the decay of potassium (http://rfrench.livejournal.com/185880.html).

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Incomplete info. The banana problem included the amount of potassium in a banana. We need to know the 99(m)Tc dosage info for what CJ received, plus how fresh it is. Then, of course, we need to look up the environmental 99Tc traces for high tech industrial areas and the body's absorption rate to determine what fraction of CJ is already 99Tc. Finally, we need to know CJ's weight

and that's were I stop doing the problem before I get slapped.

Of course, the neutrino scanner display will be overwhelmed by the flare from the thyroid. *snerk* (Dang, I left my tricorder in my other Starfleet uniform.)

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know. Like any good "exercise left for the reader" it is unsolvable with the known information.

"Exercise left for the reader" is in the same class as "it can be easily seen that", which means "we have no idea how to derive this, but we copied it out of some other book."

I've probably told this story before...

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

In my grad school E&M course, the prof gave us a homework assignment which included "Go to pp. N-N+1 in Jackson, and fill in the steps in the derivation between equations M & M+1". So we started in trying to figure out how to get from the one equation to the other, but none of us could make head or tails of it.

During discussion section, we asked the prof for some guidance. He started out, "Certainly, this is straightforward!" 30 minutes later, there was no free blackboard space and he was scratching his head. "I must be missing an obvious step here. I'll get back to you next time."

Of course, I mentioned Jackson as the textbook author because he was a prof at UCB. So in the next class, the prof comes in: "I talked to Jackson, and it is obvious! Here, it goes like this..." More blackboard filling, etc.

I feel confident most technical educations include a few experiences like this.

Re: I've probably told this story before...

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

I believe Jackson has a reputation for being inscrutable. I've never had to use it. I did the engineering-for-poets track at MIT.

Re: I've probably told this story before...

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

IIRC Jackson had the reputation for a high error rate when I was in grad school - though not nearly so high as Goldstein.

But Landau & Lifschitz were the inscrutable ones. Mostly, IMO, because Landau was so brilliant that even after Lifschitz translated down to mortal-speak for him, the derivations were still surpassingly compact. The upside was that e.g. their CM text was a tiny fraction the size of anyone else's, and you felt like you had really accomplished something by the time you worked through the derivations.

I recall wandering around the UNC campus feeling affinity with the Incredible Hulk after my bone scan. Since our research group collaborated with the radiology folks on medical imaging stuff, they were happy to give me a copy of my raw dataset to play with afterwards.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

What the scanner picks up to make the pretty medical pictures is the gamma rays.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose it's easier than detecting neutrinos!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Learning about the very short-lived isotopes used for nuclear medicine had to be the most fun part of my intro to nuclear physics class. We had a couple of radiologists who came and talked to us, showing lots of pictures and trying to recruit.

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Should you find yourself with any superpowers, your alter ego is safe with us.

Of course, if you feel that you need to use the Hypno-Kiss, we'll just have no choice but to submit...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I want all the superpowers I can get, even the boring ones like X-ray vision and the ability to fly whenever I'm wearing spandex and a cape. However, I should NOT be trusted with the ability to make random people's heads explode.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

No Capes! Capes are Dangerous!
Haven't you learned anything?
Me? I just want a Tardis. That ship can hold all my Stuff and get me to all the cons no problem!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The Cape is a Lie! But they're so cool looking.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

If anyone mentions a strange glow on the horizon, I'll just refer them to your currently irradiated state. :-)

[exvapi.livejournal.com]

While performing my duties as a lab experiment for NIH, I was administered 6.1 mCi of indium-111 pentetreotide. While this was being injected into my vein the tech suddenly realized that they had failed to ask if I was flying back home or driving to NYC after the round of studies. Seems there is a get out of jail free card they have to get from Homeland Security to allow passage through the scanners and that I would have needed it for the next several days if flying.
Do know if the half0life of indium-111 is that long, but maybe folks could enlighten me.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Normal 111-In has a half-life of 2.8 days. The excited state, 111(m)-In, has a half-life of 7.7 min.

[exvapi.livejournal.com]

As the test was performed 2 hours after and then again 24 hours after injectioon, it must have been the normal 111.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh cool. It's good to know there's a way to get it done.

When a coworker saw my little elbow band-aid and asked whether I'd sprung a leak, I told her no, I was radioactive... but at a level where the only thing I shouldn't try to do is fly commercial. There was a nice pause before she said "Oooohhhhh..." :-)

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

I thought you had a certain glow about you today.

[platypus]

I had to look up "moly cow" to verify that the pronunciation of "moly" (as the shortened form of molybdenum) is generally "molly" and that I haven't been calling yet another cat by a mispronounced name all these years. :)

("Toeffe" is derived from a Norwegian word that means (more or less) "cool," in a slangy sense, but an actual Norwegian told me that it's misspelled, mispronounced (we were told it was just like "tough") and the feminine form to boot :).)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

And after all that, it turns out the hospital doesn't have one; they get a delivery of fresh glowy-goo once a day.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

I did the radioactive iodine.

I was disappointed that nothing exciting happened, except that it did its job with the thyroid.

I did go home from Sloan Kettering via a bus and was very nervous about that!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Why were you nervous about a bus? Is there something that you shouldn't have done after the radioactive iodine treatment, like be crammed in with other people?

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

I was nervous walking around NYC supposedly slightly radioactive - didn't want to hurt anyone and afraid I'd get picked up by some detector that was looking for terroists.

I had to stay away from baby Alan for a week so he wouldn't be affected :(

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I figure that last bit must have been the worst. I asked, when I got injected, whether I shouldn't be picking up any babies. The technician looked startled and asked "You have babies?" I said no, and as a result, I never got a clear answer. (I am sure this was much less worrisome than the iodine treatment, as well as being shorter in duration, but I don't know if I could have been, say, nursing.) That must have been rough, staying away from Alan for a whole week.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

It was - if you look in my blog for May 2004, you can see what it was like.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Now that I go back, I remember reading that at the time. *hugs*.