How do you do?
Swine flu madness surrounds me – it’s ridiculous. Hand sanitizers have magically turned up in the strangest places. Dutiful employees enter building lobbies, open up the antibacterial devices to check for fullness, make obscure marks on their brilliantly white clipboards, and turn around, disappearing in the crowds outside. So, we’re a society building an army of highly resistant bacteria. Let’s kill off the weakest ones, the good guys even, and leave only the biggest and baddest. It’s simple Darwinism. Let’s cause a panic and entitle this H1N1 strain as a pandemic. Let’s set up quarantines and close down schools, public offices…well, you get the picture…isn’t this craze just a tad overboard? Overplayed? Overstated?
The media hype makes it particularly understandable, not remotely strange, that a client flinched as she told me her identifying pin number, only to have me sneeze. She even jumped back a little (hey now – I covered my face!) and warily eyed me as I massaged a liberal amount of Purell into my skin. Her worry lines did not cease afterward, when I handed her a form to fill out. That was perhaps the fourth sign. The first sign would be when one of my employees called out ill for a few days. Then, a co-worker started coughing. A second one came to work sick, and abruptly stayed home the following day. My boyfriend’s younger sister complained of pains, fever, and chills – returning to her hometown rather than infect her dormitory building.
The fifth sign was when Boyfriend himself began to cough and break out into cold sweats. He began to drink tea. And abashedly burp in my presence – something he does not do, and does not promote in the company of others, strangers and loved ones alike. He says his whole body hurts and feels sore. He was grumpy all day, allowing little irritations to pile up into a festering groan of sickness and annoyance at setting foot out into the world beyond his bedside.
On Saturday, I was putting on a sweatshirt when all of a sudden my right hand, wrist, arm, shoulder blade started aching. I stretched it out. The feeling returned a few hours later. My throat began to tickle and burn. This morning, my body hurt. My eyes watered. I was equally sluggish to Boyfriend – our bodies moving around like unwilling slugs in a mild drought, seeking relief from a freaking puddle, somewhere, anywhere, before some kid decided to test out what their big sibling told them about mixing slugs and table salt.
Today continued along that route – Who made the sun so bright? Someone pull down the shades. It’s so hot in here. No, it’s so cold. Don’t sit by me – I’m sick. Well, who cares? I’m getting there, too. Even washing dishes hurts. Even drying them is torture. Having hands at a time like this is just inconvenient – fingers wiggle out of habit, out of normal use, and pain receptors flare up. Having arthritis must suck.
No fever. Just chills. No vomiting. Just aches. Not really coughing. Eyes tearing like mad. Going to ward this thing off with the following:
honey roasted peanuts. cranberry supplement. multivitamin for women. calcium supplement. acetaminophen.
Not swine flu. Just The Flu, saying hello like a nosy guy friend crushing on my sister and me pushing him out of the door, with equal charm and promises to meet up the next time I’m in town. Away from her.
