The incessant talking head and media headlines of a possible pandemic, "Is this the one?" "Is it here?" made my spouse wantt to learn everything and he became an instant knowledge fount on Tamiflu. He wants us prepared as possible just in case. He has learned about the flu reactionary agent and has learned locally, we can can receive a dose, if we feel flu symptoms coming on. He has us covered. I find myself feeling strongly two very different ways.
The first is irritation at the media for being a rabid dog again. This swine flu topic is mighty important---but it feels like election time redux the media reported on nothing but the election. Too much! I may rue my words here, but please give it some perspective.
The stronger second feeling is the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) I am feeling about the swine flu discussion. The reason is ages old and I mean 33 year old feelings long packed, parked and put away about swine flu. Thoughts of swine flu are not only surfacing, but somewhat dictating my inner life.
I was 20 years old when I was an army private finishing my MOS and beginning my first assignment. I received a swine flu shot like everyone else in Ft Jackson SC. Jump ahead a few weeks when I was home visiting my parents; got up in the night to powder my nose and lost feeling in my legs. (more on 1976 swine flu outbreak: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1894129,00.html)
I was the 1 in 1,000,000 who had contracted all-out life threatening polio as a result of a bad batch of swine flu shot vaccine. I became paralyzed from the neck down; was in ICU for two months, most of it on a respirator unable to talk. As a matter of fact, all I could move was my neck for many weeks. I nearly died a couple times from pneumonia; once a student nurse put a feeding tube destined for my stomach into lungs; I nearly drown before an astute doctor came in and ordered the tube pulled and my lungs aspirated. I weighed 98 pounds--down from 130 when I left the hospital some 96 days after I had been delivered emergency style by my dad, following an extremely uncanny diagnosis by a dear family friend, the local chiropracter, to the ER. Just in time, my breathing was failing and they had to give me a tracheotomy before my first day in ICU was over.
Lots more to this story, but the words Swine Flu....the real thing, or used to describe a shot...or merely the words...make me relive over and again, bits and pieces of my polio experience.
As my old boss and friend Richard in WA DC says, there is 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon, and also 7 degrees to me. I have to agree right now.
Work was frustrating today, thanks to the acute micromanager in charge. That as they say, is another story for another day.
Sipping middle age people "good for you" blueberry and pomegrante juice. Aint nothing like a Singapore Sling or Brain Eraser. Oh for the younger days....
TTFN
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