COVID19 Why it's easy to be good about "stay home"

Easy- happily engaged to my handsome prince and distraught sometimes about his coming Viet Nam duty, I never missed a chance to visit him at Basic at Fort Dix, New Jersey He had an RA number because if he enlisted rather than waited to be drafted, they’d let him get rid of Agent Orange with USACE Black Diamonds.

He hated chem warfare - many of his chem major pals did. It was insidious and he prayed for the day when all chem warfare would be stopped. Easy to be proud of him. On one visit, I think in spring or summer 1966, he mentioned that we were not chumming with the others - an epidemic of viral pneumonia at the post was making the guys very sick. He apologized to me and said we might get it with all the smooching, but not much to be done about that.

Sho’nuff - ugh…the same scenario as COVID - feeeling a bit “off” and then literally colllapsing on the couch at the UB Student Center the following week, I was quite alone and did not sneeze on anyone - but by the time I got me home, I was very ill. High fever worsened into delirium and I life was hazy, but I will always remember my Dad’s face anguished over my condition. Mother bustling about as the fever broke it was chills and so much sweat they say I went through four sheet changes - I have no memory of that part of it. For a month, I often needed a hand to do more than cross the room , twenty pounds lighter in a few days.

Then as I came round they told me that my fiancee, who had finished at Fort Dix and was at the Army’s Chem School at Fort McClellan Alabama, was in the hospital there, and had been, with the same illness. He made it too, but many did not. And he was glad to be okay to continue to Officers Training for USACE , then at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He graduated at the top of his class on December 8th and our Wedding pictures on December 17th found us jubilant and joking that were soooo sleek for the pictures, thanks to the huge weight loss from the illness. “ I had fun” helping him up the stairs in joking sympathy to have all the demands of a brutal disease AND brutal war training, all prima.

I forgot about this story till COVID19 - who wants to remember viral pneumonia? I researched it and found that the Army had been fighting it for awhile and found effective immunizations to help against it around that time. The later Swine flu epidemic of 1976 was more famous, but I will never forget what it was like to go through that and though my habits and fitness are great, I am older and hope my children think to find me , honeymoons or not - family legal and virtual hugs at least - just in case. Here is one of the links about the 1966 scenario http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.358.9446&rep=rep1&type=pdf

BEEE GOOD and you’ll BEEE HAPPY