Monday, December 8, 2008
My worse memory of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer coincided with my first lesson in metaphor. I came to kindergarten one day after a bout of the flu with a bright red nose, only to be greeted by the two jerks who sat across from me thinking that the moniker was the most hilarious thing anyone could ever say.
I am now in the same position, sniffling and coughing and trying not to cover everything I own with an insulation of snot. I’ve been sitting in the back of my classes. One Santa reference was enough for my lifetime.
Self-esteem, I’ve surmised, is the main accomplice to the flu in college. The week before my illness started, Watkins Health Center had even set up a type of guerilla flu clinic in my own workplace. I quickly scurried by. I didn’t want my co-workers to see me cringing at a microscopic needle, and I thought I would be fine. After sounding like a duck every time I spoke for a week from nasal congestion, the encouraging smiles of the nurses I ignored now seem sadistic.
A flu shot at the doctor used to be opportunities for free-range candy-mongering and getting cool cartoon Band-Aids my mom would never buy but made my ailments seem awesome, even if they were just covering up a bruise. Now that I am forking over $15 for someone to stab and swab me, it seems more like money pit for something I could be buying instead, like more Sudafed.
What I fail to realize every year is that the flu will hunt me down and strangle me with its viral strands no matter how many times I wash my hands. It seems like a vague, empty threat until I am lying on a couch buried under a blanket of used Kleenex. Yet, every year, this false confidence persists. I don’t need a flu shot. I can tough it out, right?
The real problem is that everyone has a conformation bias toward the flu. It’s hard to imagine everyone being ill when you aren’t.
Look around: Everyone is a potential carrier just waiting to sneeze on you or touch the same door handle in an attempt to seek out accompanying misery.
Don’t be one of those people. Get a flu shot. You are less likely to give it to someone, who is less likely to give it to someone else you know, who will give it someone else, who is likely to give it to you again.
And the financial costs don’t add up. Flu shot: $15. Kleenex, antibiotics, soup, bad movies you are too embarrassed to rent until you are home alone sick and no one sees you watching them: $40 at the least.
So go to an ATM. Withdraw $20. Drive to Watkins. Get a shot or nasal spray. Feel resentful for a while and then mostly apathetic. But you’ll be able to laugh at all the sickly invalids come January. Maybe even call them Rudolph.
— — Oberthaler is a Wichita junior in English.
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Comments
Oberthaler: I have no excuse to have the flu
The flu shot is not without risk. In November 2005, I got a flu shot that will apparently haunt me for the rest of my life.
For whatever reason – the most likely being either that the vaccine was inadvertently injected into the nerve or my immune system was altered due to a recent bout with bronchitis – the flu shot caused neuropathy in my neck. This results in muscle spasms that are, at times, debilitating.
Sitting through a church service is difficult. Sitting through a movie in a theater is impossible. Too little exercise will cause pain. Too much, or the wrong, exercise will cause excruciating pain.
I take 3 ibuprofen tablets from two to six times a day. When it gets really bad, I take a muscle relaxant and go to bed.
I now have a claim pending under the vaccine compensation program, but no amount of money could compensate for the pain or for the things I can no longer do.
Oberthaler: I have no excuse to have the flu
I choose not to get a flu shot. I don't get the flu, and I don't have $20.
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