Passing Muster

On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 in the morning, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl (in the former USSR) experienced a cataclysmic failure, resulting in an explosion and the massive spread of radioactive particles into the environment (the radioactive fallout of the Chernobyl disaster was thirty to forty times more than the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima). The Russian government initially kept news of the disaster quiet; they didn't even evacuate the town where the reactor was located until more than 24 hours after the event. That day, the 26th of April, was a national holiday for the country, and 68 miles to the south, TH, then a 6-year-old boy, was at a parade with his family in his hometown of Kiev. He remembers seeing strange black clouds. Luckily for TH and all the residents of Kiev, the winds blew most of the radioactive fallout to the north. However, the memory of those clouds--and the implications they contained--have stuck with TH the rest of his life.

We knew we would want to have an analysis done when we were ready to have kids to make sure that TH's soldiers were not affected by the Chernobyl disaster. I figured we were just being overly cautious (or paranoid) and that his doctor would listen to TH's concerns and then gently explain them away, telling us we had nothing to be worried about. So TH finally set up an appointment last week, only an initial consultation, and went to have "the talk." To my surprise, and fear, the doctor didn't say that we were being overly cautious or paranoid or that we had nothing to be worried about. He basically said, "Yeah, you should probably get checked out." TH came home with a plastic cup with a screw-on top, a pamphlet full of information about motility and morphology, and 23 years worth of worry confirmed.

The process seemed straightforward enough. From the moment of "collection," you had 1 hour to get the sample to the lab. And you had to get it there by 10 a.m.

Now, if this were me, being the kind of person who gets to the airport more than an hour before my flight, the kind of person who leaves 45 minutes for a 30 minute drive, I would have been at the lab 30 minutes after it opened (I wouldn't want to seem TOO eager), not chancing screwing up the process by unaccounted for traffic...or having trouble finding the lab.... But it wasn't me, and TH insisted that "he had it" and that I didn't have to worry about anything.

At 10:30 a.m. on Friday of last week, I got the call that the package had been delivered and all was well. As I found out later, here's how it actually went down:

9:15 a.m. On his way out the door, TH wraps the plastic cup in a bright yellow grocery bag (a good, inconspicuous choice) and heads out (we live about 25 minutes from the lab).

9:20 a.m. TH realizes he never looked up directions to the lab, so he'll have to just go from the address on the pamphlet. *Note: in the 11 years of living in this city, he still hasn't truly learned his way around. TH chooses the wrong way.

9:40 a.m. TH gets to "somewhere near the lab" and stops to ask for directions. They point him in the right direction.

9:50 a.m. TH gets to lab #1 and tells them he's there to drop off his sample. The receptionist is taken a bit aback, and then laughs and tells him there's another lab up the street that does that, adding, "Oooo boy, you'd better hurry!"

9:52 a.m. TH is running up the street, back to his parked car, flip-flops flipping and flopping loudly, bright yellow bag flipping and flopping wildly, TH wondering if all the flipping and flopping is going to affect his guys' motility and morphology.

9:57 a.m. TH parks his car in a no-parking zone in front of the correct lab, leaves on his hazards, and runs inside. The receptionist asks him to sign in and wait. It is now past 10, it has been more than an hour, and he's in a no-parking zone.

10:15 a.m. They take TH's sample, TH's car is still there, and there's no ticket.

So, ultimately, not the way I would have done it, but like he said when he called me, all turned out well.

Now we just wait and keep our fingers crossed that TH's soldiers pass muster.