My son David posted a status update on Facebook shortly after 9 last evening: “AHHH, SWINE FLU AT UD!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!”
News crews were staked out in a van beside his dorm at the
University of Delaware, he said. I quickly googled “swine flu” and “Delaware” and got a hit at the Philadelphia Inquirer. “
U of Del: four students with ‘probable’ swine flu,” the headline read.
Did I panic? No. It was more like, “Here we go again.”
About a year ago, David was diagnosed with
embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of malignant muscle tumor most often seen in young children. For several months, panic became the norm as our family dealt with this rare form of cancer.
Nearly as fearsome as the cancer was the prospect of David catching a cold, the flu or some other viral infection while his immune system was suppressed. Nine months of chemotherapy kept his white blood cell count dipping like the stock market, making him susceptible to invasive germs. The staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where David received his treatment, gave us strict orders to head for an ER if his temperature ever reached 100.4 degrees. I’ll not soon forget his oncologist saying, “An infection that you or I would shake off could kill him.”
David had just completed his first round of chemo when his dad, and then I, got sick. Some sort of bug knocked us right off our feet. We each spent two days quarantined in bed, breathing heavily into blue paper surgical masks. For whatever reason -- maybe his counts were still good -- David didn’t catch the bug.
He took a semester off from his studies at UD, spending the summer and fall at home. The downside? He was incredibly bored away from his peers. The upside? Except for the cancer, he stayed well.
David returned to school in February to start the spring semester. Ten days later, his roommate became horribly ill -- high fever, vomiting, hacking cough, muscle aches. David contacted his Hopkins nurse, Susan. She told him to take precautions: wash his hands frequently; wear a mask; and at the first sign of fever, go to the ER for
Tamiflu.
Gene and I sweated it out for a week, not knowing how long the incubation period might last. But once again, David did not get sick. The consensus was that his roommate had the flu and because David had gotten a flu shot, he was protected.
Now swine flu seems to have taken a direct flight from Mexico to Newark, Del.
On the one hand, the flu shot won't help against this virus. On the other hand, two months post-treatment, David's immune system has bounced back. Will that be enough to keep him from tangoing with swine flu? I contacted Susan. She recommended David take the same precautions as last time.
Now we wait again. At least this time the entire university is on alert. If David gets sick, he’s sure to receive prompt medical attention.
Johns Hopkins also is braced for a potential pandemic, and we can rely on our friends there.
Maybe I've been through so much this past year that it'll take more than flu gone global to put me in a state of panic. I'm really not worried.
Actually, I'm more worried about what David might do with that full box of facemasks sitting in his dorm closet. Aware of how pragmatic and entrepreneurial he can be, I could see him profiting from the pandemic by peddling his masks for “a small fee.”
Now that I think of it, I have boxes of surgical masks and gloves stored in the linen closet upstairs. Hmmm …
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