Irrationality

This whole H1N1 thing has gone overboard. And I just want to stick my fingers in my ears and yell out LA LA LA LA when I hear people talking about it.

I'm sick of the media hype and the constant inundation of messages. It seems that only way capture our attention and sell stories, can only be done through the use of fear and the sensationalization of horrific events which often happen to only a small portion of the population. And then we spend our time talking about the latest catastrophe and all its horrific aspects, and what a terrible state our world is in. Because it's a lot easier to regurgitate the latest story we have "heard", by which, we are merely turning this horrific news story into a form of entertainment. Because talking about it is much more interesting than doing anything about it, or questioning it, or finding out more answers.

Rationally, I know that there is a lot of overexposure and hype from the media and that everything needs to be put into perspective. However, sometime this past week I seemed to have lost any perspective I may have held, along with any kind of rationality I may have had. And it was all because I overhead a story in which a 13 year old boy was taken into the Mediclinic by his mother on a Saturday, send home, and then died on Sunday. At which point I realized that my son is 12 and he is my world.

It was then that my perspective fell away, my cursed imagination ran wild and I became an irrational person for the past week. It didn't help that my coworkers were away sick (all for innocuous reasons, like a headache, and pink eye) and I was all alone with no one around to help me to come back to reason.

And so this week I had done the following, very irrational things:

• I self isolated myself and stayed in my lab all day. I stopped going to the lunchroom and instead left the building for lunch and coffee.

• I loudly stated my opinion that it wasn't fair to us healthy people (who have to go to work if we aren't sick) when sick people show up, coughing and sneezing - because we get sick leave and get paid to stay at home when we are sick.

• I repeatedly asked my son how he was feeling and quizzed him on the status of his classmates health and considered keeping him home from school when the absentee rate hit 10%

• I kept phoning my mother to find out how she was feeling and when she didn't answer the phone, I drove all the way over to her house to check up on her.

• I started to fret over the possibility of losing the people that I love which is not a good thing when you have a very active imagination.

When I was in high school my friends and I used to spend a lot of time picking each other up and driving around the city. One night my friends boyfriend was driving and I just couldn't get over this nagging premonition that something was going to happen. Every turn that he made made me more and more anxious. By the end of the night I just wanted him to skid out of control and drive off the road, because this feeling was getting so strong that I could barely take it anymore. Well, as he was driving to my place to drop me off, he decided to take off after this car. He made a quick right turn and hit some slick ice. The car ended up sliding across the road, up over the sidewalk, where we finally stopped when we hit a snowbank. We were only shook up and needed to only hop out of the car, push it out of the snowbank before we were back on the road.

And that's how I feel with this whole H1N1. The whole build up that my son would get sick was much worse than him being sick. And he did get sick this weekend, with the common flu. And I will love him and take care of him until he gets better. And yes, he will get sick again. And he could get H1N1. But life is what it is, and I will not let fear dominate my mind or my actions anymore.

~b~