Life of Wry

Every fall in our country, health care providers from coast to coast send out cheerful emails to their clients that say, in effect, “hey kids, it’s that time of year again, time for your flu shot.”  They then put on their serious faces and let us know that through our sensible and responsible action, we will avoid most strains of whatever flues might be going around this year… which benefits us, of course, but also the greater community.  Self immunity, community immunity, all important, all good.

Getting a flu shot kinda sucks, but hey, you know, it’s what we do–for us, for our communities, for healthy America.

Anyway, we got our email last week.

So, on this lovely Saturday morning, we rode our bikes along the graceful, tree-lined east edge of campus, past the creek, on to the green belt, and… well, ok… we actually didn’t ride our bikes, we drove, but only because we had a cranky teen who complained mightily about having to get out of bed so early on a non-school morning to go get a shot.

We arrived at the clinic and got into a short line with other first-day-of-flu-shot families.  The operation was efficient and business-like, staffed and carefully organized by earnest, well-trained volunteers with name tags and clip boards.

We filled out short forms, noted our desire for either a shot or a nasal application (which thrilled Peter) and five minutes later, we were on our way out the door.  Back into the sunshine, off to enjoy our easy days.

Here are Peter and Jim, and another family that looks to have come directly from soccer, heading back to our cars (or bikes), maybe stopping for treats on the way home, maybe stopping at the Farmer’s Market.

First world all the way.

I’m not really making fun of our little experience here. I’m enormously grateful.  We have access to efficient and effective preventative health care and we are incredibly fortunate.  This is not the case for most people on the planet.

Yesterday I read a story in the Enterprise about a Davis doctor who’d just returned from a trip to drought- and famine-stricken east Africa.  Dr. Hernando Garzon spent three weeks volunteering with the humanitarian organization Relief International which deals with numerous health crises arising from food and water shortages.  People there are compelled to migrate in search of resources and as these migrants gather into camps, additional health concerns emerge including infectious diseases from poor sanitation and hygiene, and epidemic diseases like measles and TB.

And by the way, I read the story yesterday while eating lunch, and honest to god, as I read the most heartrending part of Dr. Garzon’s account, I was shoving a big gob of pasta into my mouth.  The irony struck me immediately and was painful. Felt an uneasy jolt of first world versus third world injustice.  Felt like shit.

Conditions in east Kenya are beyond comprehension, the picture of a severely malnourished infant that accompanied the story brought quick tears, followed by an overpowering sense of helplessness; the problems in impoverished third world nations are so big and unfathomably boundless.

When you’re reading about suffering on the other side of the world, it’s all so abstract. The suffering is horrifying and at the same time so utterly beyond the context of your life, your experience, and the capacity, even, of your imagination.  But…I found myself thinking about the east Kenyan story while in line for my flu shot.

It was a harsh juxtaposition.

But awareness is a good place to start.