My good friend Jan ruined an otherwise pleasant coffee-shop conversation by asking, “Are you getting your flu shot?” It has been well over a year and a half since I have had a flu shot, and well over ten years since I actually had the flu. Some would chalk this up to having gotten flu shots for each of those ten years, but I disagree.
I told Jan I know plenty of poor slobs who dutifully got in line to be jabbed, and then contracted the damn flu anyway. In my mind, flu shots are just about the same thing as “Sweetest Day” where the greeting card companies concocted a holiday to sell more cards.
There are probably loads of you out there screaming –not just crying- FOUL! You are all absolutely convinced that flu shots will save you from that ole demon flu bug. You are all probably also equally convinced that soap is what gets your hands clean.
Not so, says a doctor friend of mine. Believe me, folks, I was just as incredulous as you are. My doctor friend says that unless there is actual anti-bacterial stuff in the soap, the only thing it really does is to, in my doctor buddy’s words, “make water wetter”.
He laughed at me when I asked him just what the hell he meant by that.
“It makes your hands more slippery, and washing the soap off means washing the germs down the drain. Soap is just an aid to water.”
I have no scientific proof that he’s right. None at all. What I do know is that during “flu season” the reason people tend to get sick is partly due to the fact that they are touching their faces more often, after touching contaminated surfaces. Why? I don’t know. You may as well ask me to explain how soap makes water wetter. Maybe it’s cold air-drying out the skin, maybe its psychosomatic urges making us all claw at our noses all winter long.
Doctors recommend frequent hand washing during the flu season. They say this goes a long way towards not getting sick. I believe them, and in spite of my doctor friend’s insistence that soap doesn’t really do anything but help the water, I use an awful lot of soap, too. Why not make the water as wet as it can be?
My friend Jan, upon hearing all this, called me crazy, and stood up to leave the coffee shop, clucking her disapproval. “If I get sick, are you gonna come over and make me chicken soup?”
I laughed at her. “Hell no!” I said. “I’ll have take-out sent over to you. Let the delivery boy catch all your germs.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “I thought you said all you needed to do was wash your hands!” This was true. I believe I’m better off with some hot water and soap than with the needle, but I wasn’t letting Jan breathe her nasties onto me. No way.
“Jan, friends are friends, but you gotta keep your germs to yourself. I only share with people I’m kissing. As for my doctor friend’s advice, I believe it…”
She gave me an evil grin. “You believe it,” she said with more than a hint of glee, “ BUT….”
She had me. I had to say something quick. “But, dear Jan? BUT? I’ll give you but. Doctors are required to carry MALPRACTICE INSURANCE. If my friend is wrong, I can’t sue him over a little flu. So I have a little doubt or two, cuz he gave me advice I can’t possibly sue him over. Still, I’m a believer in this advice because…”
Jan didn’t even give me a chance. “Because you hate needles like everybody else” she said, “and you’re using wishful thinking to try to avoid getting sick.”
Just then, Jan gave a little cough. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom at top speed to wash my hands. I didn’t even say goodbye. That was a week and a half ago, so far so good. Jan called me yesterday to tell me I was bad luck, I made her sick, and the reason I myself have been healthy all these years is because I am a CARRIER of the flu. Like Typhoid Mary or something like that.
I’m going to have to ask my doctor friend about that one. What the hell? He wasn’t wrong about the hand-washing.
