Six days ago I woke up at 2am in a haze. The full onslaught of a new disease ripped through my body. My mind was hazy. My joints and muscles pulsed with pain. I shuffled sadly to the bathroom.
‘How did I leave you,’ I thought, as I looked in the mirror at my sunken face and parched lips. I splashed water on my face, trying to focus my thoughts on a happier place, wondering how things could go wrong so quickly. I had felt mild symptoms earlier in the day but was convinced it was just allergies.
I wondered if I had done this to myself. A few days earlier I bragged that I hadn’t been sick in almost ten years. Now I was in the grip of influenza A and regretted so many things.
New Year’s Day – two days before
I sped through Washington Dulles Airport. It was completely destroyed, with a zoo of people of endless varieties and behaviors flying past and crashing into each other. The stress was palpable. I heard a man shouting at a poor lady behind the desk. One mother walked by with a custom luggage bag, while her son sat on a mounted seat. Another had his orange tabby cat in his cage. The cat looked around and seemed happy to be in the cage, instead of in the overstimulating circus of the terminal.
After a brief stop, I came out of the bathroom and saw a little boy standing right in front of me. He walked alone. He was just 2 years old, had curly black hair and was doing that funny Godzilla walk that toddlers do when they’re just starting to walk.
He placed his feet on the ground and turned his blank gaze to me. Then he gave me a drunken, ultra-enthusiastic smile.
“Where is his mother?” I thought. Then I saw her seemingly emerge from the shadows and float behind him like a good mother.
I waved at him and he waved back with his drunken smile still beaming. His mother also smiled as she watched. Then we went our separate ways.
A six hour delay later, we finally boarded our plane. When I saw my chair, I saw that same baby sitting on his mother’s lap. We would sit next to each other. I sat down and said, “Hi, I waved at your baby earlier. I’m not sure if…’
She interrupted me and said, “Ohhh yes!”
And we talked some more. Her son’s name was Mason. And I mention him because I suspect he gave me this flu.
In my infinite wisdom and playful spirit, I would give him a high five and play games with him every now and then because he was so fun and adorable. I ignored his wet cough and the fact that he was a toddler tasting every inanimate object in the airport. I ignored the fact that I had seen him crawling around on the dirty ground. The child was a seed planet, like most small children.
Yet there were more suspects. There was a man in his fifties with a sickly pallor, sweating on his forehead as he waited urgently for the bathroom. Another man on the plane had a troublesome cough, which was also wet, and he did not cover his mouth.
This could all have been avoided if I had just gotten a flu shot. I always turned it down because I felt I was too healthy and young to need one every year. I didn’t want to spend half the day feeling like the weather was bad. And so far my cost-benefit analysis has been wrong. No flu shot for 10 years. No flu.
Today? The equation has shifted dramatically. I would get twenty flu shots before I had to go through this again. Only when you’re in the grips of a nasty bug can you truly appreciate good health, because good health is noticeably absent right now. When you are sick, all you can think about is how sick you are and how you want to get out of it.
My best friend’s mother got the same flu. She is 70 and it turned into pneumonia, and now she is on a ventilator. She was expected to make it, but it was close. She’s still not awake.
There has been a wave of flu infections, in addition to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Covid, sweeping across the United States. Why? People have largely taken their attention off the ball when it comes to safety and hygiene. There was a complacency in society and now the pathogens are striking back.
I lie here now with my laptop, taking ibuprofens and vitamin C, guzzling water and lamenting my fate.
I just had to get caught up in a god complex about my immune system. I was like a gambler who, after a few lucky hands, starts to think he’s talented. I got greedy and kept coming back to the table for more. Now I sit here with a week (and counting) of my life sucked away.
And I fell for the same mindset I saw in several ill-advised people during the peak of Covid, who shouted that they didn’t need a vaccine because they got a lot of sunlight or because of XYZ, only to end up in the ICU a few days later.
More specifically, I had fallen into a cognitive trap: the normality bias, where we tend to underestimate the threat of something and fail to prepare for it. The perfect example here in Florida is when hurricanes hit and people are told to evacuate. They often refuse to do so and face serious consequences, such as being swept away in the ocean. It also includes car wrecks, which often happen because people lose discipline after years of safe, accident-free driving.
I got fair warning that a nasty flu was coming. I didn’t listen. Now, here I am.
I’ve realized that getting sick is a sign of losing control. By the time you feel the symptoms, you’re stuck in the ride and can’t get off. Rest, water, vitamins can certainly help. But generally, your body and the infection have to work things out between themselves, and that will take as long as it takes.
It was never that cute little Mason who gave me the flu. I gave it to myself. I have chosen not to bring the issue to the fore. My partner went to get the flu shot a month earlier and I opted out.
I am reminded of an incident my brother-in-law experienced. He is an anesthesiologist. During the height of the pandemic, he helped on all fronts in their hospital. One patient had to be put on a ventilator and she asked, “Can I just get a vaccine?” She had refused to get a vaccine months earlier. He had to look straight at her and say, “It’s too late for that.”
Germs don’t care about our biases. They don’t care about politics. They are unique in their mission. And they will hold us accountable for our lack of due diligence.
Take it from me – and don’t blame the wet coughing toddler if you get the flu. My partner has been near me for a week, with all my wheezing, coughing and lung cutting, and still hasn’t gotten the flu because she got the shot. The vaccines are now available. I suggest you take action. You don’t want this.
