A Germaphobe Is Born
What’s worse: pandemic or fear of pandemic?
IF YOU DIDN’T know a bell cord could be pulled with an elbow, you may never have pushed an elevator button with your knuckle or unlatched a restroom door with the hams of your fist. These are skills I’ve mastered in response to the current pandemic. I don’t know if swine flu will be roaring or fading by the time you read this. I do know that in October my daughter’s middle school made national news for the high–tech way it was getting homework to the one–fifth of the student–body—one–fifth—that was absent.
I consequently know that I’ve become a little nuts.
This is new for me. I have seriously germophobic friends whose fear of MRSA has kept them out of hospital rooms in which their elderly parents lay lonely and in pain. One of these friends will not take her child to the contagion–riddled doctor’s office for any condition short of an exploding appendix or spurting neck wound.
My approach with these friends—and we all have them—has generally been abject ridicule. As one sits sniffling with her common cold, attempting to pinpoint the precise source of infection by forensically retracing each fingertip’s encounters across her day, I do supportive things like lick my hands and waggle them in her face. Because seriously. How can a layperson locate the origin of a germ? Why would anyone try? Can the conjecture gleaned from such an exercise begin to compensate for the paranoid misanthropy it sparks?
You know that annoying colleague who pulls a grimace and makes a great show of backing away when you tell her you’re not feeling well? I don’t like that person. That is why it’s so alarming to see the swine flu turning me into her. Part of my issue is that flu season coincided with the start of the year at my daughter’s new school, which ushered me into a new bus routine. No more genteel No. 25 meandering quarter–full through leafy residential neighborhoods. Now I ride the standing–room–only No. 3, the public–health thrill ride my husband calls the Sputum Express.
It’s a stop–and–go route—really, the Sputum Local—traversing Pill Hill along an axis seemingly designed to promote the most efficient spread of communicable disease. And I’m not talking about its stops near an addiction recovery center, a big public housing project, and two jails—though such destinations certainly serve individuals with more on their minds than covering coughs. No, it’s the clinic stops that give me pause: Cherry Hill Swedish, Minor and James Medical, and that noblest of lifesaving institutions and crown jewel of petri dishes, Harborview Medical Center.
Published: December 2009
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