Ron Olson, my fellow Mayo board member and the first to know, called on a Saturday evening to get a report and I said, “Best I’ve felt in a long while.” Sunday morning I awoke feeling “fluie,” an expression favored by Meredith’s doctor father at the onset of flu. By that evening it went from onset to full-blown. I was miserable with congestion, aches in other muscles, swallowing difficulties. With germ-fighting blood cells on the other team a flu infection can quickly go terminal. So for only the second time in my life I was quickly rolling down a Sloan corridor in a wheelchair, headed for treatment against this potentially perilous condition. Once again at the check-in: “Tom Brokaw, two six four oh.” The Sloan urgent care physician in charge asked on entry if I’d had a flu shot. Of course, just last September. “So did I,” she explained, “but I’m just back after eight days out with this strain. I think our flu shots were for last year’s flu.” There it is again, the body’s constant adaptation to help or hurt us, the vast, intricate systems reacting to whatever enters their spheres of influence.
What do You think about A Lucky Life Interrupted (2015)?
