Michelle Thomas was born in 1952, at the height of the tests, and her medical troubles started soon as a teenager. As student body vice president at Dixie High School, ovarian cysts caused her to double over in pain between classes.

Shortly after, illness struck again. Thomas was a dancer and member of Dixie's Jetettes drill team, but later in high school, she complained of extreme fatigue. She was falling down, having trouble with her balance. She was eventually diagnosed with polymyositis, an autoimmune disease that has a degenerative effect on muscles tissue.

But Thomas' medical ailments were far from over.

It was 1993, and Thomas was enrolled and ready to start the masters of social work program at the University of Utah when doctors found breast cancer. Hopes for the degree faded. "On the day I would have started the program, I had a mastectomy instead." Six months of chemotherapy followed surgery and radiation came after that.

The cysts, the muscle disease, the cancers. She calls these her "fallout cards."

"Everyone in St. George has one, and many people have multiple cards."

Like other inquiries through the years, a visitor asks why she doesn't just move. Get away from the memories and the poisons she sees everywhere.

"If I were healthier, I would move," she says. "Besides," she adds, "me and the sheep were here first."

She is an upbeat person by nature, but the dull thump of worry about what's next never lets up.

Three months ago, doctors detected precancerous cells in her salivary glands.

"That was the darkest moment of my life," said Thomas. Salivary gland cancer is extremely deadly and recognized by the government as a fallout-related disease. Now a delicate scar marks the area where part of her salivary system was removed. Talking about it makes Thomas cry. She's clearly tired.

She is sure someday she will die of illness directly or indirectly related to the pink skies under which she played as a child. She believes the radioactivity pervades the soil, the air, the cells of generations who have lived here since the winds blew downwind.

Sometimes she feels like she's just waiting. Cysts, then her muscles, then breast cancer, and now salivary gland cancer.

"I just thought, 'Oh my Godfrey, I just can't do this. Don't take me piece by piece.' "

"Back then we were told by the government to build bomb shelters, that the Russians might bomb us. Meanwhile our own government is bombing the hell out of us 130 miles away. The irony of that is just too rich." — Michelle Thomas.