Tohoku EarthquakeNever will I ever forget the early morning hours of March 11, 2011. Only time will tell, but it may turn out to have been one of the most significant days of my life in terms of taking care of my health.

It was about 2:30am and I was sitting on the couch with my laptop, working on this website and watching television when the phone rang. It was my sister who wanted to tell me about some personal experience with an earthquake she had. While she began explaining it to me, I happened to change the television channel and there, on live TV, was a streaming broadcast from NHK News in Tokyo covering the Tōhoku earthquake.

My jaw hit the floor while I watched the live feed of the tsunami racing across the Japanese countryside, devastating everything in its path. My sister continued talking until I finally said, in a dry tone, "Paula.., a huge earthquake just hit Japan." We continued to talk as we both watched whatever coverage we could find. The Earthquake struck just 15 minutes before I turned on CNN and I was watching it unfold.

The following day I discovered the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant had been devastated and it was leaking radioactive particles and I immediately went online to check how the weather patterns might disperse the radiation. Sure enough, the jet stream typically blows east from Japan towards California and across the USA. Soon after I began finding websites that were showing computer models of how the radiation might spread via the jet stream and it didn't look good. The United States was right in its path.