It must be the flu, or the plague

I heard part of a story on NPR this morning about the overuse of antibiotics. It's not a new story, but is of increasing concern. It got me to thinking about sickness and work and how we view them both these days.

At the risk of generalizing too much from my own experience, do you remember when you were a kid and you woke up feeling kind of tired and yucky but not really sick, and you complained to your mom? There was the hope that she would say, "Aw Honey, you don't look too good, why don't you just stay home from school today?" Freedom! I might not be sick sick, but I needed a day of respite from life, maybe to keep me from getting sick.

Of course, more often she would give me that slightly concerned, mostly exasperated look that said she had to go to work and couldn't stay home with a maybe sick kid. I never had to go to school really down and out sick, but there were plenty of days when a tummy ache or sniffly cold was not enough to warrant staying home. So what did I learn? Don't pay attention to those signals. If you're not dying, get yourself up and get moving. Responsible people ignore ill health ---- or any health, for that matter ----- and don't let their classmates/teachers/teammates/co-workers down. The corollary of that is, take this pill or medicine or powder or syrup and just keep going. There's a remedy for everything and staying home is for sissies.

It's probably not a far reach from never admitting illness to always being fine. "How are you?" "Fine, fine." If I don't feel fine, I can always take a pill, take a drink, yell at someone, bitch and moan about other people's incompetence. . . There's some sort of remedy out there, something to take my mind off of the pain.

I've been researching some diseases lately to include them in my current novel. Smallpox, diphteria, measles, whooping cough, malaria, scarlet fever, polio . . . there's a nearly endless list of the conditions that killed generations of our forebears. Disease was a constant threat and could strike at any time. Because there was so little reliable medicine available, people had a respect for sickness that we don't share anymore.

Antibiotics and other medicines have created a revolution. The epidemics that used to wipe out whole families and entire villages, have been largely controlled or extinguished, at least in the industrialized world. Now we succumb to chronic, lifestyle diseases ---- high class problems, as we say in AA. Too much food, too much alcohol, too little hard work and exercise. They'll kill you just as certainly.

I have not been infectiously sick since I stopped teaching a year ago. We have a remarkably healthy household, and I'm grateful for that. I harbor a lot of superstitious behavior and beliefs about that, but cut me some slack. It seems to be working. Probably the biggest thing, though, is that I no longer have to be around children and co-workers who have learned the modern protocol for sickness ---- if you're not on death's door, go to work! After all, the world can't get along without you.