The Flu’s Silver Lining

Get Vaccinated!

Get Vaccinated!

My 16 year old son and I were diagnosed with the flu on Tuesday. My wife was diagnosed on Wednesday. What luck?

Concerning the seasonal flu, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says I am contagious 1 day before symptoms develop and up to 5-7 days after becoming sick. Do the math. That is 6-8 days of germ spreading capability walking around. Knowing this, our family physician, Dr. Dabney, “quarantined” us in our home for 5 days or until we were fever-free for at least 24 hours. Our son decided he was well enough to attend school after his 4th day.  His tempreture had returned to normal so we allowed it.  He was experiencing cabin fever.  He also wanted to attend the Friday night football game.

While not the family vacation we envisioned, we did make the best out of a bad situation. We did something we haven’t done in a while.  We watched movies together daily. One day we watched “Valkyrie” with Tom Cruse.  The next day we saw “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with Brad Pitt. We started watching “The Alamo” with John Wayne but never got past the opening scenes.  You have to really be sick to watch the entire 2 volume set of “The Alamo”.

We read the newspaper from cover to cover every day and seldom touched the computer. There’s something about being sick that makes you want to stay away from banging out keys on the computer. I can’t explain it. I know that our laptop stayed in its place for well over 3 days without being touched. My son’s computer was used once daily for 15 minutes as he downloaded his homework and other assignments from teacher websites. Now that we are all better, the first thing we’re looking for is the computer.

Work. I went to work on Monday and felt utterly miserable so I left at 10 AM and returned home. After being diagnosed an official case of the flu, I called the office and told them “I have the flu and won’t be able to return to work until Monday”. That sounds pretty self-explanatory to me. Unfortunately, they did not understand what I said. I received several phone calls about minor issues that could  wait or someone else could solve. I decided my cell phone had an “off” button and I remembered how to use it. I answered my voice mails once a day to stay current with the office. The most frustrating voice mail I received was a lady calling me to express her concern over my entire family having the flu and ended the conversation by asking me to do something trivial for her immediately. As I’m listening to the voice mail, I’m wondering if the world would stop turning if her insignificant need was put on hold until I could return to work.

To make things worse, I just coordinated a company-wide flu shot clinic at work over the last 2 weeks. Naturally I didn’t get a flu shot. I never take the flu shot. I never get the flu – until now. I’ve read that the flu vaccine is formulated and batched at least 6 months in advance based upon scientific guesses of which flu will prevail the upcoming flu season. I never was big on shots in the arm, butt, or anywhere else. Now, I encourage you to get a flu shot every year. While it may be a shot in the dark, it certainly is better to spend 5 minutes getting a flu shot rather than being quarantined 5 days.  It’s like the lottery. You can’t win unless you play.

I encourage you to get a flu shot every year

When I return to my job, the work will be there. I’ll be behind for a few days. People will laugh at me for not taking the flu shot. I’ll have crow each day for lunch. But when everything is considered, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Our family grew closer during this sickness. I’m not sure who took care of who but it was certainly a silver lining to having the seasonal flu.  What a great vacation!

 

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Posted by Admin on Feb 6th, 2010 and filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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