Why I Wanted To Punch “It’s Just the Flu” People in the Face
Our father got the flu in February 2018. No big deal, how many times in his life had he gotten different strains and shaken it off?
Not this time.
I received the 5 am call that no one wants. “Hey, your father is really ill. He just went into septic shock. You need to come home.” I didn’t even know what septic shock really meant. Especially not at 5 am in the morning. I had to regain enough consciousness to look it up.
I caught the 10 am flight headed from San Francisco back to AR. It takes all day to get back with the time change. Then the surreal walk into ICU to see the person that I had admired my whole life for his toughness. He looked completely washed out and everyone was upset.
We were all wondering what came next.
What followed was eight months of him battling for his life almost every day. The sepsis had destroyed his heart and exacerbated his CPOD, trashing his lungs. He fought back several times, almost died several others.
I have a video of him clipping grass in our orchard with 3 machines strapped to him grinning from ear to ear.
That was 2 weeks before his heart gave out and he passed peacefully in his sleep.
So the quote I kept hearing two weeks ago was, “We loose 40,000 people a year to the flu and no one changes their behavior for that.”
Well, maybe we should.
I often ask myself why we spend so much on different things versus tackling the problems that will affect all of us eventually. Just because something happens doesn’t mean we should accept it as inevitable.
Deep down inside, I’m terrified of getting coronavirus. I don’t want to go through what my father did. Especially in the middle of a health crisis. Sure, I’m only 50. But I have diabetes. The amount of time it is taking for severe cases to recover is horrifying after watching my father go through it.
I hope no one has to suffer. But realize when you are publically cavalier about your actions regardless of how it affects the public health, you don’t know what others have gone through personally.
You would never know how I felt about this because I rarely speak out. This really isn’t about politics because this is about to become incredibly personal for thousands of our fellow citizens. The least you can do is be compassionate.
