When I was about 7 or 8 years old I got strep throat. I remember this clearly because it resulted in my staying home from school for several days in a row while not feeling all that bad. I was contagious but high functioning.
Mom took me to the doctor’s office in the small town where I went to elementary, secondary and finally high school, about 2 miles from our farm. Adjacent to the doctor’s office was the pharmacy and I couldn’t get enough of that joint when I was a kid. It was the only place within 20 miles where you could drop off film to be developed, buy a card and a box of Russell Stover candies for your grandma, pick up a vanilla scented candle, select from a rack of magazines, buy paper clips, Vitalis, note cards and hemorrhoid cream all while waiting for your prescription of penicillin to be filled.
As a reward for my illness, I was allowed to pick out magazines and get some throat lozenges that actually tasted good instead of the putrid ones indigenous to our medicine chest. I wasn’t much of a reader then but I loved the idea of acquiring reading material in case the mood ever struck. I picked a magazine with Grover on the cover and possibly the latest Ranger Rick.
Once home I was quarantined to the couch and covered with a brown, orange and yellow crocheted afghan that was made by my great aunt Mabel; it smelled like waffles. Great aunt Mabel, through marriage, was one of my mom’s people: The Minnesota Greenleys of Mower County. Aunt Mabel smoked like a chimney, had a low but discernable beehive, wore sunglasses indoors and out and was either cuddling or screaming at her dirty gray poodle, Cinder on every occasion I saw her. She was the best.
My Grover magazine, candy-like cough drops and a glass of flat 7Up were stationed on the coffee table next to me. And even though I didn’t need it, mom probably placed a puke bucket on the floor by the couch just in case.
I liked being taken care of, having medication a doctor prescribed because I needed it to get better.A sibling could snatch the waffle afghan right off my body under normal circumstances; but in this instance it was mine because I was sick. I was left alone to ponder things and watch hours and hours of television.My brother couldn’t get within ten feet of me unless he wanted to suffer the wrath of our mom; no one of sound mind did.
Strep can run like wildfire through a farmhouse full of kids - or a school - or a church basement, daycare, etc. The last thing mom wanted was a houseful of sick Kopsa children (there were four of us).
Doctor Button (yes that was his name) said I would be a health hazard to anyone in range of my sneezes or coughs until the antibiotics kicked in: about 24 - 48 hours. I was to be avoided at all costs. School was out of the question. I couldn’t go burn the place down breathing streptococcus fire.
As the delta variant has become dominant I wonder about home.
I wonder about the nursing homes, long term care facilities (LTC) where our loved ones - disabled, aged, those in the final stage of life - so often end up when we despite our love and best efforts can no longer care for themselves.
I wonder about the families of the thousands of Iowas who died of COVID 19 - who had to die alone in isolation away from their families as they left this world.
Governor Reynolds, her staff and the bewildered IDPH epidemiologist, Dr. Caitlin Pedati stood at podiums early in the pandemic talking about the disease. They were either lying addressing concerned reporters and citizens prop up a Trumpian lie: it will just magically disappear, masks are tyranny, dump data, restrict testing, politicize public health as we watch our fellows drop like flies - must be god’s will…
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