“What is next for you two?” the reporter asked.
“Well, we still haven’t met each other’s families so that is important, and certainly one of the first things we have to get done. I actually have only spoken to her parents on the telephone and the same can be said for her, so I think we need to take a week or so off of work and go meet them in person,” he smiled ear to ear, “Maybe we will get everyone together here in Washington D.C.”
“Wow, well I personally think that would be good, given the upcoming wedding.” The man turned to Sandy, “Miss Cooper, might I ask you a question about working in the Emergency Room the day the attack occurred?”
“Sure,” Sandy said speaking her first word ever on television.
“There is a story going around about a man who came into your ER carrying his teeth. Would you elaborate on that?” he asked.
Sandy told the story of the man with his teeth in hand that wanted them put back in his mouth so he could eat his meal. Having that image back in her head brought tears to her eyes. She concluded with, “That is one of the many things from that day that I dream about regularly. Many of these dreams cause me to wake up all sweaty. It was like something from a horror movie, and if anyone else had to see that first hand they would never question why we are at war. There were other patients that were worse than that man, but the thing about him that sticks out is that he was in such shock he was barely aware that he was injured. He eventually passed away. He seemed to think we could just re-install his teeth. You see his brain had been partially destroyed by radiation, and his logic and reason were just gone,” her voice quivered a little.
“So what else about that day sticks out? Or how about anything since that day?” he asked.
“Well, I haven’t been at the hospital in about a week, but as I understand it from some friends, something new has been popping up. We all know now that there is some radiation emitting material spread around the area as a result of the bombing. What wasn’t widely known, even by the medical community there and elsewhere, were the after effects of that exposure,” she said.
“Perhaps you could tell us about it,” he said.
“A scientist over at the White House explained it to me. Horrifyingly, as part of a nuclear explosion not all of the radioactive material is destroyed. Much of it is thrown into the air. This is where nuclear fallout comes from. Some of these components are the radioactive materials that made up the left over bits from the bomb, and still others that were created as a result of the detonation.
“The Iranians, as it turns out, knew this was going to happen. They put some other things into their bombs that they knew would hurt a great many people. I think the press has done about a million stories now about how this was a Uranium bomb, but one of the things the Iranians put in there was a small amount of Plutonium because our belief is that they only had a small amount. Some nuclear scientists told me that this was just an impurity and didn’t add to the explosion but did spread the plutonium around. The result being that the detonation spreads some really dangerous stuff around into the air. Plutonium, medically speaking, is a very dangerous toxin and if inhaled and could very well be fatal to anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to inhale it,” she said.
She took a very deep breath before continuing, as if summoning the strength to continue to tell the story, “So what is happening now is people are breathing in that microscopic Plutonium. The effect of which is worse than being close to a plutonium bomb. It turns out that just one gram of that stuff is toxic enough to be fatal if ingested. Someone figured out that if you release Plutonium in the air it is more dangerous as a toxin than as an explosive, because as an explosive it only kills the people in the area of the detonation, as a toxin it spreads far and wide, and they took advantage of these fact. They used it as a sort of radiological bio-weapon,” she explained.
“Well our viewers are adults, and curious, so why don’t you tell us a bit about what this toxicity does to people, if you don’t mind,” the reporter pushed.
Frank squeezed her hand and said, “Its ok honey, if you don’t want to I am sure we can get someone else to come in and tell them about it.” He wished it wasn’t Sandy who had to tell this story, but someone had to get it out there.
She looked at him, patted his hand and said, “Its ok, I can give them some of it, but I am sure there are people better qualified than me to fill in the details. Please remember that nurses treat patients, we don’t solve huge medical problems so our experience is more specific to the care side of the medical field. I haven’t ever treated one of these patients, but from what I have read it is pretty bad.
“Early on the only known symptom is pain. It is pain that approximates that of arthritis. However, soon after the onset, it becomes unbearable. Imagine for a second that your bones are larger than they used to be. Your body is a specific size but all the sudden at the very center of your tissue and nerve cells is an extreme outward force of pressure. Kind of like a balloon ready to pop, only, in this case, it’s your bones increasing in size, and attempting to burst.
“Keep in mind it is one step worse than that because bone marrow is at the center of your bone, so the core, just like an apple core, increases in size dramatically. Imagine what would happen to a fully grown apple if the core increased in size by ten percent. Well it is the same concept, the growth isn’t ten percent but it is enough to be excruciating. It pushes out causing your bones to feel like they want to shatter. Then your bones push on your tissue. Your skeleton literally stabs you in many places all at once. It is horrible. After talking to my colleagues in the hospital the only thing they can do is make people comfortable with a high dose of heavy pain killers,” she finished.
“Surely there is a way to treat it,” the reporter probed a little shaken from that news.
“There is, I think, with chemotherapy and some bone marrow transplants, for the naturally occurring disease. The problem is with the Plutonium induced version of what can only be called accelerated bone cancer is that it comes on so fast no one can stop it, or even slow it down. It shows up and grows so quickly that in a matter of days, if not hours from initial diagnosis, you pass away,” she finished speaking very clinically.
The reporter looked at her with well-practiced sad eyes, “Ms. Cooper one last medical question for you. We have all been to the movies and seen the comic book style radiation mutations that occur and produce things like The Fantastic 4, The Hulk, Spiderman, what can we expect from the standpoint of mutations?”
Sandy visibly saddened, “Honestly I didn’t know the answer until last night when we had dinner with some people from the Department of Energy. The deformities you are going to see are not going to be anything like you would see in the movies. The current generation of adults can expect almost nothing more except, perhaps, some higher incidents of a variety of forms of cancer. The trouble will be in the future children born to anyone exposed. What radiation does is deform your DNA. If you are fully formed adult this won’t be a problem, for the most part. If your body is partially or nearly complete growing, you shouldn’t have a major problem. The offspring of the fallout victims on the other hand, they will develop deformities from the day they are conceived due to these damaged DNA molecules.”
“These deformities are never beneficial. We know that due to the lessons learned from Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki that the children born of the people exposed to high levels will have problems. Those problems can be anything from physical abnormalities to mental, or developmental problems. The short answer is we just don’t know, but it will not be good. Many of these kids who suffer from these problems may not live for very long and while they live they will not be normal. They will likely suffer for their entire lives. I am personally planning on petitioning Congress and the Senate to fund a way to find out if we can screen adults for these potential abnormalities. It would be great if we could give them the knowledge they need to understand the risks before deciding to have children. If those people know they have a high probability of these deformations in their offspring then they may choose alternatives when deciding to have a family, such as adoption,” she had the occasional tear running down her cheek.