Flu diary: Great Pandemic 2009, part 9
Colorado Springs — Tuesday, November 24, 2009 and work a second day is easier in some ways, and much rougher in other ways. The tougher way, chiefly, is due to my cough, which thinks it is something really quite special. It shows off at every opportunity, and especially becomes bubbly and effervescent when other people are nearby.
Many theories exist about a virus controlling its host in ways that ensure that it can share and expand its territories, widen its horizons. It could, or possibly not be that the flu senses other potential hosts and triggers a gag and cough response in its host (me), in order to spread the wealth around.
Or possibly you just have to cough when you have to cough. Plus, you must consider, that by current guidelines I am not communicable, that supposedly ceased to be a problem about seven days ago at the last of my initial fever.
Do you believe that? That 24 hours after the intial fever of Swine Flu, that you cannot infest others?
Me neither. But our world is based on making money to live, and that is always the baseline in our culture, in most cultures. Work until you drop.
I sit in an 11:00 a.m. teleconference with three other coworkers, and do my best to put on the front that I am a whole and hale warm body. I am not broken. Seriously, none of these men need to call up the agency and demand a fresh warm body, one that is not accompanies by Mr. Coughy. And that loquacious fellow sits near me in the meeting, giggling and grinning, occasionally slapping me on the chest and almost setting off a coughing spree. But for the most part I am able to contain myself, and Mr. Coughy.
I make it through the day and race home to pick up the family. Genevieve has an appointment at 5:30 p.m. to have her chest checked. I know, even as we drive as a family toward the "clinic" that this is a waste of time. This is not really like taking your baby girl to the doctor. This is State insurance (quite a good preview of coming socialism attractions) and nowadays you pretty much have to take what you can get, and so I doubt Genevieve will actually be seen by a doctor, but something more like a "Physician Practitioner," or a title along those lines. This is not the first time we have been here. We got this insurance just before Genny was born, a couple of years after I was laid off from a company that provided real health-care insurance (although in fourteen years it kept on getting stripped smaller and smaller).
The man that examines Genny — the "doctor" — does the usual spot checks. He listens to her tiny chest, and pronounces her "fine." We are relieved. She does not have pneumonia.
Then this "doctor" says something so entirely ludicrous that I cannot believe my ears. I blink at him for several seconds. Mind you, this is not the first time I have heard of such a thing. I have a family member in California that was told the same thing, and a friend in Oregon that knows someone who was "tested" and told the same thing.
"This is just a bad cold she has," the doctor tells us. "I see hundreds of cases each day, and all the kids have the same thing, it is just going around. It is just a cold. Nothing more."
That might sound like a goofy little story I made up to establish some kind of point, although I have no idea what kind of point can be made from something so absurd, ridiculous, and really, when you think about it, it is downright CRIMINAL.
The health care industry — and yes I do mean industry — is lying.
How can people hope to deal with the Swine Flu when "doctors" are lying about it? Sure, they have been handed their orders. They are just being good little...I will not use the word I was going to use here, but just imagine a blond, blue-eyed soldier in a shiny black-billed cap, marching in tall shiny black boots, aiming a Luger pistol directly at your face, and imagine you have been time-warped to World War II. Just following orders. That is always the excuse for the lies. And the liars.
Because we, the poor little ignorant people, we cannot handle the truth, can we?
But unless we receive the truth, how can we deal with this thing, a Great Pandemic, in a real, honest, open, straightforward way? The answer is, we cannot.
I know something about colds. Rhino viruses. Generally, a cold is centralized about the face. The Swine Flu might behave in a similar fashion, at least at first, but it quickly and powerfully becomes something else entirely.
My family in California were told that they had "another flu," just a plain-jane Type A, that's all. The friend of a friend in Oregon was supposedly given a "Swine Flu Test," which was obviously a lie, and told the same thing, that this is "some other flu."
While people are dying, children are dying, doctors are lying. As the flu mutates and develops toward a much more virulent form, the doctors will begin to lie more and more, and many of them will begin to die, more and more. Perhaps lying to the last gap.
It is infuriating. Sure, we expect the news media to lie. They are about making money, satisfying sponsors, generating bigger viewerships to rake in more and more money, and what could that possibly have to do with the truth? Nothing.
But doctors? Should we come to the place where we just expect them to lie to us? Certainly, they are all about making money, with little else to consider, and surely they are terrified at the moment that they are on the point of the gold-laying goose they have been throttling in their sweaty hands for the past hundred years, they are cringing at the approach of social medicine.
To top off the infuriating insult, Carolena asked the "doctor" if he could check out Wolfy's lungs as well. Wolfy actually sounds fine, but we have been worried because he has contract pneumonia in the past.
The pudgy little man steps backward, throwing up his hands as if we have seized the Luger pistol from his sweaty hands and pointed at his chubby heart.
"Oh no, can't do that, sorry, can't do that!" he spits out in rapid-fire stacatto.
"You can't just listen to Wolfy's lungs?" Carolena breathes, incredulous.
"The lawyers, you know, the lawyers, they won't let me," the "doctor" says, not sounding apologetic, not at all.
"The lawyers," Carolena repeats, staring at him. We both envision them, the lawyers, hiding just in the other room, standing at perfect attention, all their bright caps and boots gleaming, bayonets fixed and ready.
I think about slipping him a bribe. Perhaps a fat $20 bill. We could call it an "extra copay." But chubbo goosesteps from the room.
"Happy Thanksgiving," he tells us.
We have our family. And that is what is important. That is what we can be thankful for. Plus, Genny does not have pneumonia. Well, I wonder, can we really trust that, that she does not have pneumonia, when the "doctor" just told us she had a bad cold, like hundreds of other children he sees each day. Granted, this is a State-run clinic, on State-sponsored insurance, and so these hundreds of children this "doctor" sees every day, informing their worried parents that this is just a bad cold, these are primarily minority children.
Back in the car driving toward home, coughing into my fist, I tell Carolena: "I am buying a stethoscope."
"What a great idea," she agrees.
What a society. What a complete lack of trust. Trust the doctors? The lawyers? The government? The media? Good night.
All and all, the kids are doing great, and Carolena is healthy and free of illness. Me and Mr. Coughy are the real sickies.
"Don't worry," Mr. Coughy whispers in my ear. "I will never leave you. You are just such a perfect host."
