Boston is in the middle of a flu epidemic, but I came up yesterday anyway, for a meeting today at MIT I had promised to attend. After a long train ride from New York, I took the T to Harvard Square, followed by a pleasant walk to my friends’ house.<\/p>\n
At the end of a lovely evening, I retired to the waiting guest bed, where all was well until around 4am, when I woke up feeling a chill. I thought this odd because the blankets were quite warm. Then I started to feel a dull ache in my head, and I thought to myself “Uh oh, did I remember to wash my hands after getting off the T?” Suddenly I could recall every surface I had touched, every overhead metal bar I had grabbed onto during my trip on the Red Line from South Station to Harvard.<\/p>\n
I thought how strange it would be to lie awake in bed while experiencing, moment by moment, the gradual onset of full symptoms. My nose was threatening to run, and I started to feel an ache all through my body. The battle was engaged, and the little virus cells were multiplying.<\/p>\n
“I have no time for this,” I thought. “There is so much I need to do this week!” But of course Influenza does not care what I think. It operates on an entirely different logic.<\/p>\n
I finally got out of bed three hours later, feeling just fine. Apparently my body had fought back and had won.<\/p>\n
I would love to take some sort of credit for the valiant actions of my body’s defenses, but alas, I know the victory had nothing to do with my worthiness or lack thereof. I am just grateful that my immune system came through for me.<\/p>\n
Hooray for our side!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boston is in the middle of a flu epidemic, but I came up yesterday anyway, for a meeting today at MIT I had promised to attend. After a long train ride from New York, I took the T to Harvard Square, followed by a pleasant walk to my friends’ house. At the end of a … Continue reading “Flu flew”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11232"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11244,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11232\/revisions\/11244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}