The Germs are Coming Ha Ha!

I've always felt that there would be less illness if there was no holiday season.  Some of my worst colds and flu in my life have come after the holidays or other interstate travel.  The reason for this is simple.  When something is going around eventually everyone in town is exposed to it and either gets sick or develops an immunity. Then comes Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Festivus.  We go visiting, we kiss, hug and slobber germs all over each other.  We cram together in airplanes with recycled pathogen-filled air. We are in crowded, overheated stores handling merchandise that has been inoculated with millions of microbes. Out of town germs mingle with ours and sometimes mutate into new and more exciting creatures.  We dip chips, munch finger foods and cluster at the buffet table.  Not everyone remembers to wash their hands or cover their coughs and sneezes.  The graph below shows increasing numbers of influenza infections in the last weeks of 2011.  

All this becomes painfully obvious in my line of work.  In my 30 years as an ER nurse I've braced myself as the relief from the hectic holiday season settles in and the cold and flu season accelerates with vengeance.  Sometimes I get lucky and I've already had my own exposures early in the season and I sail through this time unscathed.  This year our house got hit with a gastrointestinal affliction which is going around.  It may or may not be a rotavirus but it's hit everyone in my family and delayed my return to my routine at the gym.  


One always hopes when things are passing through our intestines more quickly than usual that the result is unexpected weight loss.  If that happens it never lasts once we're no longer dehydrated so there is no use getting excited about it.  I thought I was well enough to go to the gym last night but I guess all the pedaling on the bike got things to start moving again.  As I was getting off my bike I made a little "fluff" (my sister-in-law's word)  Nobody hears these things at the gym because its noisy and everyone is wearing ear buds anyway.  But by the way the guy on the next bike looked at me I knew that he knew I did it.  Fortunately I got home before anything worse happened.  There is little that is more humiliating than having diarrhea in a public restroom.  


During my time in the bathroom I came up with this little adaptation to a popular holiday tune.  


You'd better not wait
You'd better run now
Before its too late
And the bathroom's not free
Rotavirus is going around.


We're going a lot
Many trips to the pot
Our bellies sure do gurgle a lot
Rotavirus is going around.


There's nasty diarrhea
And really stinky farts
You'd better not come visit us
If you don't want to start...


The run for the pot
Pooping a lot
Tummy cramps and your social life's shot
Rotavirus is going around!


Love to all, 


Marlena of Mohegan