So Fiona has a little cough.
Okay. It’s not little. It’s big. It’s a BIG COUGH. And it rumbles up from somewhere deep in her chest and explodes from her little throat like the splutter of a mom who has just discovered her son has a social studies project due…tomorrow.
The Cough has been going, off and on, for many days now. On the 10th day, Fiona got intimidated by her 3rd grade teacher after suffering the baleful hairy eyeball each and every time she coughed. The school kicked her out; we took her to see Dr. Peter Leavitt. He examined her throat, he peered in her ears, he listened to her heart and her lungs, he took her temperature. He proclaimed her clear of all nastiness, save for that hacking cough. A virus? Maybe. An allergy? Maybe. We may never know who gave it to us (a pox on their home), what it is, or where it came from.
One thing we do know is that Fiona does not have swine flu.
Fiona does not have the swine flu, but every time she coughs in public, all activity in the general vicinity ceases. Wholly. Completely. People are correct in giving us the deathray, but they are incorrect in their assumption that my little precious is going to infect them with swine flu. If they only knew.
Whatever virus Fiona has, let me just state this, would be making all the deathray hairy eyeballers wish they had swine flu. She coughs all day long and then she coughs into the wee hours of the night, grinding her little teeth together relentlessly as she tosses and turns. She’s too energetic to sit still and yet too horribly infectious sounding to leave the house, go to school or gymnastics. She’s too healthy to eat grape medicine, ginger ale and sourdough toast and yet “too sick” to eat healthy fruits and vegetables. Everyone everywhere – siblings, teachers, parents, coaches, perfect and relative strangers -- glares at her suspiciously each time a rumbling coughing fit erupts from the vicinity of her chest.
Then there is Elias. He does have swine flu. He lays, prone on a couch and covered with a silky down blanket, and watches movies. A concerned woman (who shall remain nameless) delivers smoothies, hot soup and mint tea on round trays that fit upon his lap perfectly. He sleeps. He coughs a bit – a delicate, polite affair akin to a throat clearing -- and moans while his body feverishly tries to beat back the porcine bugs that are plaguing him. The woman delivers more tea and a few fruity popsicles and some ginger ale. People tenderly call to check on his well-being and make offers of chicken soup. He feels wretched, but will probably feel better in three days.
Now, I ask you, which sick person would you rather be? The one with energy to spare and a three-week festering cough that makes everyone hate you or the one with a four- to five-day period of discomfort that leads people to wait upon you as if you were on a spa vacation and/or behave in other unusually solicitous ways?
And that brings me back to the initial point of this blog: we know not what we fear. In the interest of self-preservation, then, we fear everything. But some things we fear more than others, e.g. swine flu.
Don't be afraid, I say. Find a mother to take care of you -- any old one will do fine -- and then lick the nostrils of a feverish (this is the important part) cougher to contract the swine flu. If you're not immunocompromised, get it over with.
And if you accidentally contract the mysterious hacking virus, a la Fiona, you're on your own, dude.
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