JENNY A. TIBBETTS
Stories (2/0)
End of the World
We were the only survivors. There were 62 of us that survived. One minute the world was there above us, that is before the silence hit. I was working as a plasma scientist at the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. The mine is home to one of the largest underground xenon detectors in the world. The detector is literally buried a mile beneath the Earth in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The mine was built to study dark matter and hunt for particles that could help explain the “Big Bang” event that gave birth to our universe. The experiments we conduct are spearheaded by an 815-pound xenon detector primed for particle detection deep below the Earth.
By JENNY A. TIBBETTS3 years ago in Earth
Baby Blanket Anew
"Baby Blanket Anew" Twenty-Four years ago, my son Tanner Ashcraft was born on a beautiful summer day in Salt Lake City Utah. Although my son was born early, everything seemed to go well at first. But, when they brought my baby to me and placed him into my arms, I felt that something was very wrong. He looked so pale and felt very limp as I cradled my listless baby in my arms. Doctors soon discovered that his lungs were starting to fail and they didn’t know why. They immediately life flighted him to Primary Children’s Medical Center and placed him in the newborn neonatal ICU. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. It felt more like one of those stories that you read about in Reader’s Digest magazine or something that happens to someone else. I certainly didn’t believe I would be staring death down with the arrival of my baby. I didn’t get to experience that same blissful home coming that I did with my first child, surrounded by family and friends who would be eager to meet our new addition to the family. Instead, the neonatal ICU became our new home away from home; a place where some babies come to live and some come to die. The sights and sounds of the ICU will forever be etched in my head. The uncertainty of it all was palpable to say the least. Would my son be one of the lucky ones and live to see his first Christmas?
By JENNY A. TIBBETTS3 years ago in Families