Longitude

It’s late and I’m awake. I’m lying in bed thinking about the second Rhode Island student– another 12-year-old suburban girl– to die of the H1N1 flu virus in the last two weeks. My mind knows that there are over one million people in this state and that two is not a significant percentage to warrant panic.  However, with a two-year-old in the house and a pregnant wife sleeping next to me, its tough to feel completely secure, especially knowing that I work as a kindergarten teacher in a classroom where air-born sneezes are a common occurrence.

At work I slather myself in anti-bacterial liquids and preach the importance of a good hand washing to my students, but the twins, Janiel and Jenny, were out today and Markus went home early after a coughing fit that left pieces of visible phlegm all over our classroom carpet.  My student teacher has three sick daughters at home, one with a temperature of 103.  It feels like an all-out assault on my immune system and my brain is careening out of control imagining the millions of infectious germs biding their time in the back of my nose and throat, waiting for the perfect moment to invade my cells. ”

The stress is unyielding, and I understand that I’m not alone in my fears here in Rhode Island, but I feel ridiculous because I know that within the greater picture of world health I might as well be the Bubble Boy, living in my cozy bungalow on the south side of Providence.  I picture Mercy, a mother in Ghana, West Africa putting her daughter to bed during the wet summer months, knowing full well that her child’s naked body will becovered in malaria carrying mosquitoes as soon as she falls asleep.  I think about Murthi, a Dalit father in a south Indian village who watches his child drink standing water because that’s all they can find after the devastating flood that washed their home away.  He knows each puddle surely contains enough bacteria to produce a life ending case of dysentery, but has no choice as his child must quench his thirst somehow.

For me it’s perspective in the form of privilege, but honestly who am I to freak out about my child’s chances of catching H1N1 when I live in a world where 8.8 million children died before the age of 5 last year.  In my country, I’m living in fear of my loved ones getting sick because there’s a chance that they will perish while too much of the world lives every day knowing that their loved ones will mostly likely get sick and die.

As I roll out of bed, frustrated that I will not sleep on this night,  my mind flashes to 2003, when my wife, Laura, and I had to make an emergency room visit while traveling in Dakar, Senegal.  Laura was quite ill with what was eventually diagnosed as amoebic dysentery.  As we huddled together in the dark hospital waiting room we heard the screech of a car’s tires and the scream of a child come through the open entrance.  Two men carried a young woman, less than 14 years of age right past the sleeping security guard and into the hospital’s back examination room, which we were waiting to enter.  The girl was awake and in obvious pain, but she seemed quite alive as she cried and struggled in the arms of these men.  The door slammed and we were once again waiting in silence.  When we first heard the unfamiliar wail from the back room we pictured an animal caught in a trap, but as it continued to punctuate the eerie silence we realized it was the agonizing cry of the girl’s mother — her child had died right there in the doctor’s impotent arms.  Maybe it was inevitable.  Maybe she had been more sick than she looked.  Whatever the circumstances, from that moment forward I understood the importance of medical privilege.