The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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"Thursday's Fare"
MARCH 2, 2000
The Perfect Flu
The flu came early to Stanley Avenue this year. It came early and it came hard -- without mercy. Like some kind of heathen invading army, it targeted the house on the eve of a major holiday -- Thanksgiving -- and leapt upon us while we slept. It was a VERY successful attack. I have just reached a point where I think I can write about the whole sordid thing.
First, let me clarify the shot issue. My wife and I invested our $10 apiece and received our shots. It was a first time ever flu shot for me. Shots, as I suspected then, and fully know now, do not work. In fact, they worsen the flu severely by reminding you of the money you've wasted at just the moment when such thoughts are hardly tolerable. Somehow they make you feel like you almost PAID to get the stuff -- kind of like forking over the $60 to go deep sea fishing and spending the whole afternoon bent over the rail. It is not a good feeling.
Someone remarked shortly after this episode that we must have gotten "Beijing Type B" or "Hong Kong A" or some other strain that was not covered by this years inoculation. I quickly corrected them.
"No, you don't understand. This wasn't some namby-pamby little oriental thing. This strain was from Morocco or the Sudan or something. Its real name was likely "Pharaoh's Flu" or "Herod's Revenge" or "Flu of The Great Kahn." It didn't take prisoners and it didn't take names -- it took YOU -- and rung whatever you thought you were inside out. Chinese it was not."
From descriptions I've read in National Geographic, it was about one step short of Malaria. In fact, given my druthers I'd take my chances with a good ol' jungle fever any day.
It started, as it always does, at Viral Club." This is a small group activity in which young children get together with the express purpose of wiping their noses, mouths and hands all over everything and each other for about two hours. These clubs meet once a week at churches and preschools in the winter months, and are very successful in achieving their primary aim, which of course is to infect as many kids with as many viruses as possible. Recently I submitted a suggestion to the Journal of American Medicine that all new strains of flu viruses be named after the church or preschool of origin in lieu of the so called country. This gives a much more accurate and useful description than is presently available. Examples might be :
- Fallon Park Elementary - Class A
- Second Presbyterian Preschool, Type 2 - Wise Owl Derivative
- Honey Bear Learning Center Sub Strain B
- Roanoke City Basic Type 1
We are fairly certain we had "Second Pres. Busy Bee Type 3" as our youngest daughter who attends this particular club was the first to succumb. We also knew we were in some pretty serious trouble early on, as anything that can sap the energy of this 2-1/2 -year-old has got to have some serious oomph. Suffice to say that within eight hours it had spread to all four corners of the household save one -- and unfortunately it was mine.
In a family of six, there is only one thing worse than getting sick, which is, of course, not getting sick while everyone else INCLUDING MOM does. I figured I was in for a tough couple of nights, but little did I know we were about to be overtaken by, "The Perfect Flu."
There was one moment somewhere along about the third night around 2 a.m. as I sat next to my 5-year-old in the bathroom offering "commode comfort," when I knew -- I mean I KNEW -- it could not get worse. I was washing sheets and cleaning carpets and bringing juice and filling vaporizers and "wiping heinies" and making beds and doing all the above with the sort of sleep deprivation that brings madness to Navy Seals in training. It was at about this time as I sat pondering my predicament that the dog came around the corner and threw up at my feet. I watched her amble slowly down the hall and curl up under a table. She gave a heavy sigh. I was wrong. It could get worse.
And it did.
Two days later, Sunday morning broke with overcast skies and threatening rain. The weather inside wasn't much better. Mom was still down and I only had two of the four children semi- back to speed. I had slept perhaps eight hours in five days. Mother Theresa was slowly becoming "Nurse Wratchet." I shuffled downstairs, put on some coffee and eyeballed the growing pile of dishes in the sink. The counters were a mess of ginger ale stains and saltine wrappers. The trash was piled high around the can. I figured I at least ought to get that out. I stacked the weeks extra refuse on top of the lid and grabbing both sides began my journey to the alley out back.
Half way up the yard the top part of my load shifted and a tepid mix of paper, cans, coffee grounds and fruit rinds cascaded to the ground. I clenched my hands and let out a hard breath of exasperation. Why had I been sentenced to such a perfectly miserable week? Thanksgiving had come and gone and I had been left the role of the sleepless maid -- missing almost all opportunities to get together with family and friends. I let go a second angry groan of frustration and began to pick up the scattered trash. It was then that I saw it.
It was a picture on the front page of the Saturday edition of The Roanoke Times. It had gone unread.
An AP photographer had captured two small children running shoeless through the snow and mud of earth quake decimated Turkey. They were carrying a small packet of food back to the unheated tent that housed their family. Their faces were bright and alive and they were smiling as though they'd just seen Christmas.
I stood there in my robe and slippers and studied the youthful smiles. As I did, I glanced back at the house where my sick family safely convalesced and then up and down the back yards of our typical suburban neighborhood. I brought my eyes back down to the page. There was thanksgiving and joy in those smiles. There was a spirit of confidence and trust in the midst of overwhelming tragedy that I had failed to muster even in my relatively petty circumstance.
As my 2-year-old would say, I felt "a lot a bit" small.
That picture revealed to me at that particular moment healed me in much the same way Dickens's ghosts had done for Scrooge. Unawares, I had found myself in need of a good dose of perspective, and when I had failed to garner it on my own, it had been given anyways -- clear and concise and right on time. I can see those smiles like it was yesterday, and it is my hope that no amount of temporal difficulty will ever blur their memory. After I collected and dumped all the trash in the big can out back, I straightened the newspaper and placed it flat on top. I guess I was hoping someone else would come along and see it.
Three days later the dreaded "Busy Bee Type 3" caught up with me.
Somehow, it really wasn't that bad.