“Take care of yourself, now ya hear?” smiles the resident nurse who weighs me in and scrawls 139 pounds on my chart at the campus health clinic. My whole apartment building is down with the worst bug most American docs have witnessed in recent history and I am still symptom-free.
Let’s call the visiting strain of influenza just what it is. The next in a long line of nature’s Merchants of Misery . Historically, influenza has brought civilizations of people and animals to a coughing, wheezing, feverish and bloody end.
Influenza, in its many forms, feels like hell. It tends to strike suddenly, causing fevers, severe muscle aches, and a cough, often for 7 to 14 days. It can lead to pneumonia as mounting bacteria invade flu-aggravated lung tissue. Norovirus doesn’t affect the upper respiratory tract, but you might wish that it did.
Norovirus simply turns your guts inside out and makes you want to die, before leaving you alone a day or two later. Norovirus cannot be prevented by vaccines, while influenza can. And both can be prevented by good hygiene–or so they say.
Today on CNN, my mother saw an FDA warning about overmedicating and the resistant superbugs.
She promptly sent me a text about the Pfizer drug Azithromax–aka. “Z pack” and the overuse to treat communicable but non-fatal bugs in our population. The Z pack is questionably unsafe for many people with odd symptoms and heart conditions, which is like 60 percent of everyone.
Thanks FDA. Thanks CNN. This is the same medicine that I have been prescribed since my fungal allergies began after my first pregnancy. And it is the only synthesis I am told I can take safely with my own weirdo immune system.
My oldest son is also allergic to “sporins” and years after his birth I met a naturopathic physician who told me that his developing body and the sensitivity to bacteria may actually have made mine allergic–come to think of it, I was still drinking Kombucha tea at the onset of those symptoms…who knew?
As with most of our modern medicines, it is just a matter of time before they are not the best idea anymore. With all diseases from pink eye to cold bugs to chicken pox and shingles, the best treatment is to regularly wash your face and hands. And by regularly I mean always.
As for the miserable Norovirus and his sister, the flu, the best idea is to avoid getting them in the first place. And the best part is, (wait for it) there are fewer ways to get sick than to stay well.
So, regardless of your hygienic habits or the lack thereof, the best advice is to be aware of the bugs we share…and the ones you might be growing in your petri dish self.
1. If you have a public job, get a flu vaccine. Public as in an office of 10 or more in a confined building with shared workspace.
2. Everyone else: Wash your damn hands frequently and well, with soap or triclosan.
3. For the love of osmosis, sneeze and cough into the crook of your elbow, not into the room or the palm of your hand like we did in the 70s.
And please, if your visibly drippy or scurvy, sneezy or pukey, or your bum is runny…even if you only have a red sore on your left drippy eye, stay in.
Just stay away and take care of your sickly self. Stay off the bus, stay off the subway, stay out of class, and stay HOME.
msmendesmith 