...about someone who attempted to give us the gift that keeps on giving. I remember once some years ago, when an adult child was coming for the holidays, maybe Christmas, though I am not certain what we were celebrating as she headed into town. She was in a sorry state, feeling really low, with what had all the markers ofbeing a debilitating major cold, rapidly turning into flu. Sad, pitiful girl who felt like she had been run over by a big truck, aching, sniffily, congested, general all-round rotten. This was not something we needed at our house.
There was some reason that it was especially risky for her to be sharing that highly contagious bug with loved ones, especially The Man Who Lives Here, with a chronically compromised immune system. Maybe he was recovering from being an inpatient, though I do not recall the particulars to give the reason he would have been hospitalized - just knew we didn't need none of that! So I immediately turned her around instead of welcoming her in, and we made a bee-line for the doctor's office. This is before the era of a free-standing ER on every corner where there is not a bar-b-que stand here in this town that dearly loves burnt meat in a variety of forms. Meaning we actually went to the doctor's office, sat her pitiful self in the waiting room, hoping for a cure.
This story has a happy ending: 'Tamiflu' had just come on the market, and she got a dose, was markedly improved in a matter of hours. No one else had the opportunity to enjoy the gift she was attempting to share, and we all lived to tell about it. This experience, though so far in the past I am sure she cannot recall the extent of the misery, taught her to go to the trouble and expense of getting a flu immunization each fall, as protection against being under the spell of the bug no one wants.
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