We lived about 7 miles north of TMI, having purchased the house three years earlier and being thrilled with purchasing our first home.  Everything was going as planned.   Our son was 30 days old and I was just returning to work after maternity leave.  We had hired someone to come to the house to take care of him, so that Monday morning I said goodbye to our newborn and drove 36 miles north to Millersburg, where I worked.  My first 2 days back were uneventful and were filled with welcome backs and a lot of catching up on mail, etc.  By Wednesday, I felt that I had made a successful transition from a “working woman” to a “working mother.”  Little did I know that my return to work, which I thought was quite an important event, was about to be overshadowed by an event that made international news…

why take any chances when you have a new baby?

I had a student reporting to me who was doing a field placement and at the end of the 45 minute drive that Thursday, she came into my office and asked if I had heard the news.  I confessed that I had been so busy worrying about my son during the car trip, that I had not even listened to the news for the morning.  She said that it sounded like there had been a problem with radiation at TMI.  I didn’t feel too alarmed, but something must have “clicked” a bit of concern into my brain because I decided to call my husband who was also at work.  He decided to call his father, who worked in instrumentation at a nuclear plant in upstate  New York. I waited for what seemed to be a half hour and then called my husband back.

He explained he’d been trying to call, but all outgoing phone circuits were busy. His father had verified that he had seen numbers that indicated that, indeed, there had been a release of some radiation at TMI.  The decision was almost too easy – why take any chances when you have a new baby?  I drove home as quickly as I could.

We sent the babysitter home, advising that she might consider getting out if town, and then we  packed up.  We packed our wedding pictures and one present from the wedding, some clothes, some food, maps, diapers, formula, and our baby, over whose head we put a thin towel, thinking that might shield him.  We left, never knowing if we would ever see our home again.

Nothing looked different, but somehow, everything seemed different.

We must have been in the first wave of people leaving, or else no one was going north, as the roads were not crowded.  It took us 7 hours to get to Rochester, which is where my husband’s family lived.  Everyone there was happy to see us (or maybe just happy to see the baby…) and we felt a lot of relief that we and the baby seemed to be ok.

We spent time in Rochester, taking heed of what my spouse’s father learned each day at work. At the end of a week, we went to Buffalo, my home town, and spent another week there with my family. At the end of that time, things sounded better so we came back to Central PA and stayed in Millersburg for another week; then we returned to our home still not sure if any of what we had done was right. Nothing looked different, but somehow, everything seemed different.

I was asked to be in one of the post-Partum studies that the University of Pittsburgh did on the after effects of TMI. They sent me results at the end that said there was no correlation with any health problems, but I have always wondered…. wondered if we had done the right thing, wondered whether, if there had been a more substantial problem, that we would ever know about it, whether we have yet to experience any health issues, or whether it was never more than was reported.

Karen