Getting Through The Flu

By G. E. Shuman

It’s evening, and I’m sick, on this late February night, and tired. In fact, much of my family has been sick, and tired, lately. At this point we are all quite sick and tired of being sick, and tired. Without whining too much, let me tell you a bit about it. My wife Lorna is now well into her third week of the toughest flu she has ever had. My son missed an important playoff basketball game last Saturday, and I missed work yesterday, all because of a miserable fever, caused by some bug we seem to be passing around. Our daughter Emily was the only healthy one among us, until tonight. She now has a fever too. I hope that soon fades, as she is supposed to perform in a big ice skating show this coming Sunday evening. That would be difficult to do, or even to watch, with a fever. By the time you read this, that show will be over, and Emily will either be healthily back in school, or recuperating here on the couch, as the rest of us have had to do. There, that’s all the whining I’m going to do. Other than to add that after being watched by us for a few days, more than a week ago, three of our young grandchildren are spending this week, at Disney World… you guessed it… with fevers. By tonight both of their parents probably want to kill us, and the way I’m feeling right now, that might not be so bad a thing to happen. By the time you read this they will be home and may have already done us in. Okay, now I’m REALLY finished whining.

I’m sure that our family’s February sickness story is similar to your own. No, you likely have not succeeded in spreading the Vermont flu bug to hundreds of kids visiting Mickey Mouse and then boarding airplanes, encouraging the wonderful little flu germs to literally propagate on the planes and around the globe. (Just like Disney, when we do something, we do it big.) But I would wager that your family has not found itself immune to the junk going around right now. Odds are that at least one person at your house is experiencing either tissue issues or toilet trouble, not to be too graphic. Perhaps they are experiencing both. If so, the rest of your family soon will be doing the same. Sorry.

What I want to say now may be cold comfort to those of you with coughs and fevers, wondering how you will get to work tomorrow and when and if you will actually feel better. But I want to tell you about it anyway. I found myself, just yesterday, mumbling several times, aloud or in my head, (It’s hard to know which when your head is stuffed.) the rhetorical question: “ Why isn’t anything ever easy?“ One of those times of mumbling was when I spilled the sugar while fixing a cup of coffee, another was having to answer the phone several times while trying to take a nap. When you have the flu even small things can be very annoying. You know what I mean.

The point that I am finally getting to, is that I have realized, after fifty three years of living, that perhaps I should stop looking for things to be easy. Maybe this thing we call our life isn’t SUPPOSED to be easy. ’Light dawns on marble head.’ Our daughter Cathy is near the end of a very difficult and somewhat dangerous pregnancy. My family has the flu. The snow seems to never stop. The thermometer keeps going down, and oil prices keep going up. Your family has the flu too, and other problems that are as big to you as ours are to us. I have said for years that gratitude is the best therapy. That being so, how would we know to be grateful for the good times, if there were no difficult ones? How could we appreciate good health, if we never experienced anything else? (I’m about to go off on a rabbit trail here, but I’m sick, so live with it.) When I feel good, I love eating food with a little, or a little more than a little hot sauce. I like it on everything from omelets to hotdogs. You know, that stuff actually burns a bit on the way down. It is more difficult to swallow than oatmeal, and is certainly not as good for you, but it is also much more interesting than oatmeal. Challenging days are also more difficult to swallow than uneventful ones. You can feel some of them burn all the way down, too. Hard times try our emotions, and our faith. But without them, how would our faith ever be strengthened? Without sadness, how could we understand joy? I believe that the experience of adversity hones the edge of gratitude for our blessings. Hey, that’s pretty good. I just made that up.

So, drink plenty of liquids, stay warm, and think of the flowers of spring. All this snow will make you appreciate them more when they come. Remember, it’s not supposed to be easy.