RUNNEMEDE REMEMBERED

Growing up in a small town in Southern New Jersey


Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The flu

I was one of most of my peers in the late 1950s to get the Hong Kong flu -- it may have been the Asian flu, since I was a teenager when both of those flus occurred.

Today I am on day five of the same kind of flu.  The aches are what I remember most from when I was 16 and had that flu.  I haven't felt this awful, not even with all the other ailments I have going on, not even since I had to learn to use my legs again after knee surgery.

I do know that a lot of people out here are sick, just like back then, but this flu -- not the one you get a shot for -- seems to be affecting mostly adults, at least we're having a harder time recovering from it, and I don't necessarily mean old adults.

When the flu went around in 1959/60 I got it the first week it hit Runnemede.  I was out of school for a week.  I would feel great in the morning and knew I'd be back in school the next day, but at night my fever would spike (just like now) and dad wouldn't let me go to school on the morrow.  I finally got out of the night-time fever by Friday.

The week I did return to school I was one of only a handful of students to attend, the rest were out with, you guessed it, the flu.



ttfn

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