Basing their decisions on panic, rumors and a natural distrust for government officials, families such as mine began to leave for the countryside as well.

Train stations, bus stops, airports and any transportation outlet was crowded with people trying to get out somewhere, anywhere an available ticket would take them. My father stood in line for four to five hours at the airport to get tickets out to Crimea for my family. At the time, my parents had only been married for about two years and whatever savings they had, they blew them that summer.

Forced to take time off work, my parents took my sister away from the dangers of radiation to Yalta, a Crimean city on the north coast of the Black Sea. They stayed away for about four months, regularly sending uncontaminated food to my grandparents, who had to stay in Kiev at the time. The primary concern at the time was to keep children away from the radiation.

For the first time in her life, my grandmother saw a Kiev entirely devoid of children. It was unrecognizable; haunting even. My grandparents, along with many others, continued working in the city. My grandfather, who worked as a scientist for the government, brought home a Geiger counter. He walked into the yard behind our apartment building and looked down at the analog dial on its face. It was all the way to the right, at the peg. In Russian, it was "out of scale," off-the-charts.

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After insisting that the situation was under control, the city of Kiev finally issued a notice to its citizens (see above). It explained that all citizens should take warm showers often, keep windows closed, and regularly wash rugs, furniture and other household items, among many other instructions. My grandparents, parents and many of their friends regularly took iodine with their food in the months following the accident to counteract the effects of the radiation. The doses were self-prescribed, as they had no idea what they actually needed to do.

A month after the accident, my grandfather got sick and the doctors determined that it was hyperthyroidism, a condition in which the thyroid produces too many hormones. Exposure to radiation is one of the known causes, but to this day, my family has no idea whether it was a result of Chernobyl.

Not long after that, my mother found out that she was pregnant with me. According to scientists, pregnant women, fetuses, infants and children are at the highest risk of developing thyroid cancer as a result of radiation. She had to make a decision, but there was no one who could answer her questions. She called a doctor friend in Bulgaria and asked if she should keep her baby. The friend said yes, having a child sooner was better than later. My mother decided to keep me.