This performance autoethnography traces a week of medically mandated nuclear isolation following iodine-131 treatment for thyroid cancer. Reclassified as an “unsealed source,” I was sent home to contain myself, my bedroom a hot cell. The week makes literal Alaimo's trans-corporeality — the body porous, continuous with its environment — which nuclear medicine treats as a hazard, severing relation itself: touch, shared air, water, space. Care travels through walls and screens. Drawing on the treatment's paper trail, the essay asks who can afford to be untouchable — from a house with a spare bathroom, on behalf of those the protocol never pictures.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Alison Fisher Bodkin (2026) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: