Getting Tested for Anthrax is a ‘Dose of Reality’
WASHINGTON – NBC in New York City. Senate Majority Leader. Tom Daschle’s office in the nation’s capitol. The Manchester Post Office in New Hampshire.
As the list of suspicious package and white powder scares grows and diversifies, probably a lot of you are wondering, could I be the next one getting tested?
Or, you could be like me, not wondering at all, suddenly standing in line on Tuesday afternoon waiting for a nasal swab that will indicate whether there are enough spores of anthrax in you, on you, near you, for you to be considered infected with the bacteria.
On one level, the entire process resembles a visit to the DMV – the wait, the sense of being funneled along, the frustrated employees steering us though – except at the end of the line in the Hart Senate building in Washington D.C., you get a little envelope of Cipro antibiotics, instead of a license.
On another level, getting tested for anthrax is a scary dose of reality for me, reminding me that times really have changed since Sept. 11, and fear can be contagious.
My initial thought as I walk into the building is simple. “What am I doing back here today?”
First of all, I should not have been put at any sort of risk just by being near Sen. Daschle’s office where the anthrax-laced letter was opened Monday, with a reporter and cameraman from Belo Broadcasting where I am an intern. But then, if there is an actual threat, what in the world would I be doing back in the potentially contaminated building? But testing is a free service for anyone who works in Hart, or even visited, and my feeling is, why not? Do it for the sake of making sure. And won’t my parents feel so much better too?
So I troop back, because on CNN they tell me the anthrax found in the letter to Sen. Daschle was particularly potent, and of professional grade, and though officials think it’s unlikely, maybe it got into the ventilation system. I am not alone. I end up becoming just one of about a thousand people who returned to get tested.
The eight-story building already looks different on Tuesday, than it did the day before.
Monday afternoon, the Hart Senate building had still been open to the public, and only the doors to the hallway of Daschle’s fifth floor office were sealed, as a Capitol police officer stood guard. Tuesday, yellow tape blocks off his office and the surrounding area. Capitol police are planted on balconies, stairways, by elevators and across the wide, shiny, lobby floor.
I take off my bracelet and drop it in the little bin beside the metal detector at the entrance, so I can step through without setting it off as usual, and scoop up my bag as it clanks down the ramp of the x-ray scanner.
The offices in Hart have tall walls of windows overlooking a central lobby on the ground level. Many windows are plastered with American flags and patriotic signs. Spanning two floors is a sign painted in bold, black letters, “God Bless America.”
Through those windows I caught a glimpse Monday, of an attempt to maintain “business as usual” that the President has reiterated so often. Many office staffers simply were going about their routines, answering phones, carrying stacks of files, jotting down notes at their desks. They stopped to glance out their office windows with amused expressions at the throng of reporters and camera crews gathered on the balcony facing Daschle’s office.
Meanwhile, through the partially opened window shades in Daschle’s office, police officers were visible briefly, along with health investigators in white lab coats. But that was the only sign of the investigation, for all of us waiting on the baloney for any sign of news.
I went from waiting on the balcony on the fifth floor one day, to waiting in line on the second floor the next. The line of people worried about being exposed to anthrax extends far up a ramp, through a doorway, and around the corner. I shift from foot to foot as I wait, and chide myself for probably seriously overreacting to the threat. I finally turn to the man behind me and ask him if he works in Hart and that’s why he is back for tests.
“Oh, I walked through this building yesterday to the Credit Union,” he says, nodding seriously. I glance down to the Credit Union on the first floor, and feel a little less like an alarmist myself.
About an hour later, I finally reach a table where I sign up on a sheet to be tested: name, age, social security number, phone number, and where I was in the Hart building on Monday.
A woman leans over with a sigh, and hands me what looks at first like a small injection syringe, but is actually just a plastic vial with a cotton swab inside. The wooden stem of the swab is about three inches long.
“Don’t forget to fill in your information on the vial!” the woman shouts, as I walk past her. We have to fill in the same information on a little label, wrapped tight around the vial. I try to write as neatly as I can as I lean against the wall of a hallway leading to the conference room where health officials are conducting the tests. But if you see a scrolling headline on CNN, “Sorboni scribble scribble tests positive for anthrax” you’ll know it was me.
The test itself is simple. I sit in chair across from a young Asian man in glasses, wearing thin plastic, yellow gloves. He has to take a quick break before testing me, because he’s been conducting the test since morning, and it’s now about two in the afternoon. He comes back, tips my head up, and slides the tip of a long cotton swab to the very back of each of my nostrils. It feels like it is briefly rubbing the inside of my face near the top of my cheekbones. A friend of mine, who interns in Daschle’s office and went through the whole process Monday, describes it as “gagging your nose.”
The test doesn’t hurt at all. It just feels odd, perhaps as though I need to sneeze. Afterwards my nose runs a little, but by the time I add my swab to the box full of completed tests, and receive my three day supply of antibiotics, my nose feels pretty much back to normal. And once I get home again, I feel pretty normal too.
In all seriousness, I don’t think I’ll test positive at all. In fact, I don’t think many of the people in line will. Not the man who was upholstering chairs in the building yesterday, sitting beside me as we wait with our swabs in the conference room. Not the girl from the building across the street who is worried because she has a fever. Probably not even my roommate who was in Daschle’s office. But “better safe than sorry” spread through our minds, faster than any kind of bacteria, and that caution is probably a good reaction as we proceed in uncertain times.
