Actress Marisa Abela was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was 23. “I was literally in a hospital bed when episode one [of my BBC1 show Industry ] aired,” Abela, now 27, told The Times of London in a Saturday, October 5, profile. “And it was [during the] COVID [pandemic], so I was in the burns unit because there was no space for me in the ICU.
” Abela had undergone both surgery and a radioactive iodine treatment , in which patients must swallow medication in either pill or liquid form before isolating in a room lined with lead for 24 hours. RAI therapy then uses a low dose of radiation to help treat thyroid cancer. “It is mental.
A sort of nuclear physicist in an astronaut suit gives you this box and you unscrew the box and tip it up and this pulsating neon tablet goes into you — like something from the opening of The Simpsons, ” Abela recalled. “And then this man, standing on the other side of the room, points a sort of gun thing at you to see how nuclear you are and it goes like, ‘Bbbbrrrrrrr’ and he’s like, ‘Yup, good to go,’ and he runs out of the room. And you’re just left there thinking, ‘This is in my body.
How has someone just given this to me?’” Once Abela was able to return home, she struggled to accept the toll that the treatment had taken on her body. “When I first went to the bathroom after surgery and I saw myself in the mirror, I thought, ‘That’s it, my career is over,’ because [my neck] was stapled, bloody,” Abel.