You know, if I caught swine flu, I'm young and healthy, and while it might be a really lousy experience, the odds of my body being able to fight it off on its own are really good. So, I figure I'm in good shape that way.
Now, a friend of mine, who happens to also be someone I work with, is going through chemotherapy treatments right now. He immune system is badly suppressed. He got the vaccination, but who knows what kind of anti-body response his body is going to be able to muster right now? What if I bring the live virus to him, because I figure I don't have to worry about me. I'll survive. He's already fighting for his life as a result of a very serious colon tumour he acquired and had to have removed. He has a wife, who is also my friend, and children, both young and old.
And he's just one person in my life. His wife, who is my friend, has a brother who is HIV positive. He's living a very normal life on his meds. We socialise at family gatherings on special occasions. His immune system isn't anything to write home about either.
And then I looked at a picture I had taken this past September when my parents were visiting. I took them out to dinner for their 49th anniversary and invited my friends and a couple who are friends of my parents. In that picture is my father, whose immune system is trying to pull itself back together from treatments for prostate cancer last year. There's my mother's friend, A, standing behind them, and she was just diagnosed with her fourth case of cancer and would have surgery and start treatments within two weeks of that picture. My friend who'd had the recent cancer operation was also in that picture. We all look like a perfectly normal group of people. Yet in that shot of seven people were three people in various stages of fighting cancer and whose immune systems are not up to the fight of a flu. It made me wonder how many people I interact with every day, or even simply share space with, in the grocery store, or out shopping. How many people are so much more vulnerable than I am, who appear perfectly fine.
Lastly, I have an adorable neighbour. Her name is Winnie. She's in her early eighties and had a mastectomy for breast cancer ten years ago. She's in a number of high-risk groups. Winnie is the most adorable woman. I want to adopt her as my grandmother. We stop in the hallway and chat fairly regularly. If Winnie's door is open when my cat wanders into the hallway for her promenade, she wanders directly into Winnie's place and makes herself at home. That provokes the best laugh from Winnie who's amazed at how quiet Bean is. She's a delight. Her chances of surviving a flu aren't great.
I have all of these people around me, ones I know about and ones I'd have no idea, and if I'm walking around carrying a specific flu that's traveling fairly quickly and I could have warded it off with a shot, but I only concern myself with me, then what good am I? Seriously? Sure, it's not "that bad" of a flu as compared to some of the others. Granted. And surely I'd have no problem overcoming it. It's targeted. We know specifically that this one flu is making its rounds -- unlike the other seasonal flus. I'd be a pretty lousy member of society if I didn't care about people like my friend, my friend's brother, my father, my mother's friend, and Winnie.
Yes. I got my H1N1 shot.
