Flu diary: Great Pandemic 2009, part 4
Colorado Springs - Thursday morning, November 19, 2009 and I wake at 4:30 a.m. and know, right off, I will be doing no work today, no artwork, no writing, and none of those things that make money for my family.
The identical call goes out to my boss, the same klaxon of illness repeated since Tuesday morning this week.
Each night I make oaths that I will go into work — each morning I know differently. Each day at about 10:30 a.m. I am certain this war is being won, but each evening at about 7:30 p.m. I feel that this is the worst night ever.
Ignoring the news, for the most part, because flipping amongst seven channels, all of them purportedly describing evolving events, I see the same exact spin. The same experts are saying the same things, and they are so obviously not interested in what they are saying. They have memorized the scripts that were distributed months ago, and they mechanically repeat the mantras, with the same frozen smiles.
So interested, for so long, reading so many different books, balancing so many varied opinions, and yet at the time when it would seem I could access the knowledge bank and crank up the volume on the interest magnifier, and yet in the middle of the meanwhile it comes down to just holding on, gripping hard, gritting the teeth and repeating: there is truth, and that is what matters, just release all the spin. Hold onto what is good.
There has been a steady pinging throughout my body. It is as if I feel the virus trying this angle of attack, and now this, and now this. My sinuses flare, but only for about an hour. Then a cough starts to emerge, but only for a few hours. It is clever, this viral fiend, and more persistent than any human. It does not give up.
Aching bones, but only for a while, then the cough, but only two coughs. Loss of breath, but in minutes it comes back.
Man the vaporizer brigade. Lug the multi-gallon monstrosities up and down the stairs. Marshal the nose flushes. Check on everyone's health. And collapse.
When we caught the virus in July (my boss at my new contract job sneezed directly on me during a conference call where three of us were grouped about the telephone, and that very night the symptoms began), I was lucky enough to get sick on a Friday evening, which gave me the weekend to fight the flu (and the virus did not seem nearly this tough in the Summer), and I only missed one day of work, just Monday, and although I was possibly still leaving a trail of viruses wherever I went, I was at the least very careful where I went.
I caught the virus at work, and this just days after eluding an outbreak of h1n1 Swine Flu at the Air Force Academy, where our family watched the Fourth of July fireworks display.
My whole family developed a barking cough. We sounded like a circus of trained seals. Their coughs went away after a week, but mine clung to me until the end of August.
Body prone in bed my mind wanders. For instance, Carolena and Bronté have shown no symptoms. They were exposed in the same way as the rest of us, perhaps just a chance passing breath in church, and now they have been around the sickies for about a week, and they are just fine. They have identical habits, diet, and genetics, in short: we are family, come on everybody and sing.
Except that Bronté eats a lot more candy and even calls herself the "candy girl."
Dirklan —first to catch the virus — who seemingly has handled catching and fighting off the flu in the most handy fashion, is a notorious herbivore. Vegetarian since before birth, Dirklan even as a baby delighted to all green veggies. For his fourth birthday Mama asked him what he wanted for his birthday meal, what did he want most of all? And Dirky easily came back with: lettuce.
To celebrate his healthy habits, we had decorative lettuce leaves made out of green icing all around his birthday cake. And he did get a monstrous bowl of green leaves, mostly lettuces, before having his cake.
Dirky crunches through bowls of salad, while Bronté and Wolfy give him disbelieving eye rolls. Wolfy is the typical kid that must be cajoled, threatened, begged and bribed to eat his vegetables (and he's a vegetarian, since before birth).
All four children are specimens of extreme good health, all above the 90th percentile for height (except Genny, she appears to be one of the wee folk). And yet even they are susceptible to the flu.
I remember reading a Wayne Dyer book several years ago and coming across a passage where he said something along the lines that if you tell yourself you are going to get the flu this season, you will get the flu this season, and if you tell yourself that you will not get the flu, then you won't.
I like Dyer, and think he packs a lot of wisdom (a skillet full of cuckoo, too), but I immediately thought: "Wow, he just does not understand how viruses operate. You can read them Shakespeare sonnets, or quote from the Bible, or Curious George, and they do their thing, regardless. The flu doesn't care what you say, positive or negative."
I think positive thinking is beneficial, for the most part, but when all is said and done, the flu is the flu.
The flu is the flu. There is nothing different about this flu and the way it works than any other flu that has ever flew, I mean flown. But it very creatively attacks everyone a little differently. The flu always does. When influenza gains entrance, it manages each person differently. The flu treats people special, not for their benefit, but for its own plans for total dominance of the host.
Everyone reacts just a tiny bit differently to the flu. The symptoms are just a tad varied. And the immune response can be worlds different, which partially explains why some people have barely a reaction, while others go comatose, or worse.
In my immediate family we have a unique group of related people, all of them vegetarian, all on supplements to boost their immune systems, and two of them resist the flu while four others go down like dominoes, all of them with completely different symptoms.
But me, with my nonstop imagination, I see the flu, safe cracker that it is, constantly at work, never ceasing in its attempts to break into the safe. It knows treasure lies within. It is constantly spinning the dial, listening intently, trying to crack the codes of Bronté and Carolena.
To shut up my mind for a while I listen to Jeffrey Archer. I lie in bed with my eyes closed while my imagination breaks free from h1n1 Swine Flu influenza and sails unfettered, higher and higher. And amazingly enough, after about two hours of the Archer story, I fall asleep.
When I wake Genny is snuggled up next to me asleep, her breathing slightly raspy, and Bronté brings me a get-well card she has fashioned from construction paper and spongy foam cut-outs, a running series of cartoons inside that she has drawn, and lots of rainbows, and princesses. My spirits are lifted.
She begins to climb onto the bed to cuddle next to me, to wedge herself in between me and Genny, when I stop her and explain that I am yet very ill, and I do not want to expose her to my sickness (well, any more than possible).
Her eyebrows come down and she crouches at the foot of the bed giving me the evil eye for ten straight minutes. Trying not to laugh I explain to her, in different attempts, why I'm keeping her back, because I love her so desperately, and I wish her to be well and healthy. After the eleventh minute passes, she loosens up and begins her Bronté nonstop chatter. By the twenty-first minute I'm considering hurting her feelings again to lessen the torrent of happy, bubbly 20-second-a-word staccato, but then I just let her go on. It's good.
Then the most amazing thing of all happens. Carolena sneaks out of the house, launches into a massive adventure wherein she drives our seven-seater behemoth vehicle to the Sunflower Market (all of one mile away from our house) and purchases ginger ale, white onions, and greasy potato chips. A bonus that is even better than just plain ole greasy, these are salt and vinegar chips, my almost-ultimate favorite, almost-healthy sin (shhh, my ultimate favorite almost-healthy sin is the notorious venti soy coffee miso with one honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon, but don't tell anybody) (even the barristas say: "What in the world? That almost sounds good!").
Ah, some light in the darkness. Snacks. Even bread (we are trained from childhood to need toast when we are sick). But most of all, those chips. Salty. Sea salty. And vinegary. I think I can make it through the day. I munch. I do not know if this is "flu food," greasy chips and ginger ale, but it is comforting.
Comfort is a good thing in times like these.
