Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 18, 1992 TAG: 9201180005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BE IT FLU OR COLD, THIS BUG IS GETTING KIND OF OLD
I know that all of us elderly people will remember that the public-health people said we ought to get flu shots.The alternative seemed to be checking out permanently, so I got one.
First time in years. Had one in the Army. Made me so sick the company clerk started processing the GI life insurance.
I am in no way saying the public-health people don't know what they're doing. All I know is what I know.
Several hours after taking this shot, I came down with a cold that would have made medical history if anybody had been interested.
When I complained to some of my friends who are really into flu shots, they laughed tolerantly and said the shot didn't give me the cold.
And they said flu shots aren't supposed to keep you from having a cold.
The cold lasted through Halloween, and I still had a touch of it Christmas Day.
I felt weak and wasted, although the scales in the bathroom suggested that I might be weak, but I certainly was not wasted.
It would seem that a man sick with a cold for that long would lose weight.
Not me. I think calories have found a way to enter my body through my skin. While I am asleep.
Anyway, I was just over this cold when I got this other ailment, which acted an awful lot like the flu.
That is, the top of my head hurts so bad every time I cough that I cry. And I cough a lot.
I have been shivering a lot at night.
You talk about shivering. I was shivering the other night while wearing a sweat suit, knee-high athletic socks and gloves.
There were three extra blankets on top of me, but I continued to set a medical record for shivering in the middle of the night.
If anybody had been interested, that is.
And the flu-shot lobby said, well, if that is the flu, maybe it's a kind the vaccine wasn't made to keep out of your body.
And they talked about different flu strains - like Mesopotamian 2 and Adirondacks 4, I think.
They said that at least I didn't have the kind that caused President Bush to throw up at the dinner table.
Then somebody said no, that wasn't the flu he had. It was gastroenteritis, and we don't have a shot for that.
Those kinds of arguments don't set so well with a man whose head is hurting terminally, and who is afraid his next cough will be his last.
I excused myself. I said I felt this record-breaking shivering fit coming on, and I don't like for people to see me like that.