Well, so much for full protection from the flu shot.
I behaved myself, looking into a busy winter season, and hustled down to my doctor’s office for a flu shot in early November. Until last week, I was merrily sailing through the polar vortex in the arrogant thinking that I would not get sick. So there.
Wham. I looked in the mirror at work on Wednesday morning and did not recognize myself. Puffy bloodshot eyes, grey skin and the whole ugly scene was gently whirling around. What on earth was the matter with me?
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The answer came the following day, when the fever hit. I was shaking so hard it was difficult to drink from a glass. I wore pajamas, a sweatshirt, an extremely thick fleece robe and socks, covered up with two thick blankets, and was still freezing.
How sick would I be if I didn’t get that shot? Horrible to contemplate. This flu is nasty, and considering how widespread it is, it makes you wonder if it has mutated a bit from the original strain. (Is that a medically intelligent comment?) Take care out there.
* * * *
Misery loves company, as the saying goes. While Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and to a briefer extent Alberta, were enduring endless days of brutally cold weather, our neighbours to the south, who are much less accustomed to it, were also struggling with the details of working and living in freezing conditions.
So, Kathleen Phillips, who as executive secretary basically runs the North American Agricultural Journalists group, sent out an email asking, how cold is cold?
“How about y’all? Are you able to get out and cover agriculture? Are you using technology to cover agriculture while sitting by a fire?” she asked.
A plethora of ag journalists from across the continent weighed in, from Saskatchewan (me and Lisa Guenther) and Manitoba (Ed White) all the way to Texas.
Jim Massey, editor of The Country Today in the United States, seized upon the opportunity to share everyone’s thoughts in a column. See it at http://bit.ly/cold-weather.
I admit to being chuffed that he included my emailed comments, as well as Ed’s. Check it out. It’s a cool and sometimes amusing peek into how ag journalists are perceiving the weather and doing their jobs in ex-treme conditions.
