Radiation - My Personal Story

Radiation and I have a love/hate relationship.  The current events unfolding in Japan have sparked an intense debate worldwide about the benefits and challenges of nuclear energy.  As I have sought to find my position on the issue, I am confronted by the fact that I live because of its healing powers and at the same time my health was compromised by its darker, shadow side.

My first serious confrontation with nuclear power seems almost ironic as I consider the large expanse of my childhood spent on the countryside of Michigan running barefoot through acres of woods, vegetable gardens, and a former peach orchard.  The exception fell within a span of just 10 months.  Within those 10 months, our family embarked on an adventure to Pennsylvania where we lived, worked and played in inner-city Philadelphia so my father could experience teaching in a Christian school environment.  On a cold March day, my seven-year old self - sporting a new short haircut - road the bus to my first grade classroom.  Jimmy Carter was President of the United States and unfolding only 75 miles from me beginning early that morning was the worst nuclear disaster in our country’s history.  The Three Mile-Island nuclear power plant had a partial core meltdown in Unit 2.   

Much of what happened did not register with me at the time.  I remember instead being enamored by the silver and gold crayons that the boy in the desk next to mine had in his 64 crayola box and the waiting restlessly for storytime after lunch when my teacher would bring us together on the rug and read aloud the C.S Lewis Narnia series.  I wanted to be Lucy in all of her queenly glory and to put my arms around Aslan’s neck and hug him tight.

Pubic health reports indicate that radiation levels where I was living at the time were not dangerous enough to impact the health of small children, but I do stop to consider the irony of the timing and my little place in the world.  As I lay my small brunette head on the pillow, in my dreams I never would have thought it possible for me to be diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 29 just as much as I wouldn’t have dreamt that I would be working for Rosalynn Carter, then first lady, during the most formative days of my career.  Nor would I dream that the very dangerous I-131 being released in the air near me would be the healing power for my thyroid cancer over 20 years later.

I turned 13 years old in France in the summer of 1986.  At times an awkward, emotional girl, I closed myself in the hotel bathroom that early July day and used loads of toilet tissue to wipe my tears.  I found growing up overwhelming and the larger world a mysterious place that held a position for me that I could not fully grasp.  That trip with my family changed me significantly.  By mid-July I had met many members of my French family for the first time and saw within them various components of “me!” They looked like me and I found my characteristics resonating in their world. 

Before visiting the family and all the “awakenings,” my parents took us on a tour of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in late June.  Little did we know that the heavy rain that followed the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in late April of that year would leave radiation levels higher than normal throughout Europe as the nuclear cloud moved across the continent in the weeks after.  As we played in the mountains of Germany, we know now that the mushrooms, and other natural materials registered higher levels of radiation.  In fact, for years, the French government hid the data supporting higher rates of thyroid cancer in the years following Chernobyl and the potential contamination of the fruits and vegetables in those months we were there.  We will never know the degree to which that may have played a role in my own experience with thyroid cancer, but I let it stand as a small clue to understanding the health issues that unfolded over the next decades.

In the fall of 2001, coincidentally during the week of 9/11, a growth was detected in my thyroid area.  By October I found myself in nuclear medicine at piedmont hospital where over the next year I was repeatedly exposed to radiation in an effort to test for, treat, and further monitor cancerous activity in my thyroid.  It is hard for someone like me – not a nuclear physicist – to understand the power and impact of something not visible but so incredibly dangerous.  The irony of it all still strikes me; how is it that the very thing that may have caused my cancer may be the healer as well? 

When one is a specimen, it is challenging to see outside him/herself during such a time of crisis and note the physical toll such a radiation load is having on one’s body.  Viewing pictures from that time, I see a girl with a swollen neck and the original beautiful brunette hair a reddish color and the texture of straw.  A vivid memory from that time was returning home from the hospital after three days of isolated I-131 radiation.  Abby and Bebe, my two dogs, longed to comfort me but the radiation load made them vomit and become so ill that they had to be removed from my room. 

I stand healed and in good health now as I watch what is happening in Japan.  The current headlines can’t begin to tell the full story of nuclear power and radiation.  The story will continue to unfold over the decades to come, and as a result, there is no way for it to fully inform the current debate or policies.  Despite my exposure to and knowledge of its incredible impact, nuclear power still remains as much a mystery to me today as it was to me on that cold March morning in 1979.