The Flu-Shot Debate

There are plenty of arguments surrounding both sides of the great flu-shot debate. So I ask: Should I get one? Or should I not?

I have to consider that lots of folks ask good, pointed questions about the process, such as, “why would I want to put toxic chemicals and virus strains grown on living tissue into my body?”

That’s really not a bad thing to ponder, is it?

But here’s the deal: even though I have a passing familiarity with the issues, and I certainly like to avoid putting terribly nasty things into my physical self whenever possible, I’ve had a flu shot every year since 1990 and I really haven’t regretted it. I’m under the impression that they work for me, and I suppose that’s about as important as anything.

In the winter of 1989-90 I was living in Corvallis and working in Monmouth. The season went along fairly normally until, finally, in February, I got a really bad case of the flu for the second year in a row. I thought I was gonna die! That summer I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where the upcoming winter was certainly going to be more challenging for me (than any Oregon winter had been for twenty years). I got a flu shot that fall at the Indiana University Health Center, and I’ve followed through with a shot every year since then.

Even when it’s been difficult…remember the vaccine shortage of a couple of years ago? I thought, in 2004, that I may have to forgo the usual flu-shot ritual. However it happened, the shortage started to ease up a bit, though, and some of us “at-risk” (read “older”) folks finally, in late December, were able to get in for our shots. I remember standing in line at the GetAFluShot.com location on 102nd Avenue in SE Portland, thinking “who are all these old people?” And, “why do I belong to this group?”

At any rate, I ended up getting a flu shot, even in that problematic year.

These past few weeks I went through the usual, yearly, mild debate I have with myself about getting the shot…and then, today, I went in to do it. The thing is, ever since I’ve started getting a flu shot, I have not had a case of the flu that even comes close to the cases I had the last two years when I had no flu shot.

Maybe, at this point, it borders on superstition. Still…

Massage

I’m always on the lookout for things (products, therapies, supplements, drugs, etc.) to assist me with my chronic-pain issues. Lately, my back problems have taken a turn for the worse and I now have fairly extreme muscular tension not only in my low-back but the upper-back and shoulders as well. Recently I’ve made trips to my out-of-town chiropractor, consulted again with my primary care physician about Chronic Myofascial Pain, and, blessedly, found a gifted massage therapist here (who I saw for the first time last week). I’ve had noticeable improvement since the massage, and I have another appointment scheduled for this week.

Also, I’ve had on hand, for a few weeks now, a “Thera Cane.” It’s a rather strange-looking contraption (as you can see). I’ve been more conscientious during the last few days in learning how to use this device, and have developed a routine of massaging my own back with it at least twice a day. I think this approach is helping. It’s available from Amazon.com, if you’re so inclined to give this kind of thing a try.

The Budding Novelist

Me? A “budding novelist?” That’s what one reader of this blog labeled me today after reading Teller’s Tale. My oh my, wouldn’t it be great if, one day, I penned (keyboarded?) a work of fiction that found its way to your nearest Borders?!

I must admit, writing that last entry was a lot of fun, and the words (on that topic, at least) seemed to flow quite a bit easier when using the third person. Curious, eh? I wouldn’t be surprised if ol’ Teller happened to make additional appearances on these pages now and then.

I was inspired to try the Teller experiment after going to see Stranger Than Fiction one more time on Saturday. While I’ve written lots and lots of narrative in the first person, including this blog and a significant portion of my dissertation, the thought occurred to me, while watching this movie, that a third-person narration just might be worth a try.

Teller’s Tale

Teller, simply, didn’t know what to do.

His life, it seemed, was at an impasse. Any way he turned seemed to be a dead end. Most days, he felt as if he were living a work of fiction: more specifically, as a character in a tepid novel written with little sense of direction or plot. Certainly, the ridiculous nature of his existence couldn’t be real. How, he often asked himself, could this possibly be my life?

Teller identified a lot with the character of Harold Crick in the recent movie Stranger Than Fiction: a person whose moments in life, the significant and mundane ones, were all but indistinguishable. Teller existed, in recent times, within a narrow range of experience from neutral to negative. If this were an actual life he was engaged in, surely it belonged to someone else.

Surely it must.

Because: here he was, this year, at Cascadia College, located in a little town in southern Cascadia. How did this happen? It was absurd, really. Yes, everything about his existence at this point was absurd. That plainly was the word for it.

Even the name of the college, Cascadia, was just too weird. This was what the campus in Bernard Malamud’s 1961 novel, A New Life, was called. In that story, a professor (Samuel Levin, steeped in the liberal arts) finds himself teaching at the fictional Cascadia, an agricultural college with traditions much different than he was accustomed to. Struggling to overcome past adversities, Levin relocates and takes the teaching job in a far-off place in an attempt to start his life over. It is a place so foreign, however, that Levin finds he must have been attracted to a mirage. His struggles, not unpredictably, continue on. You can run, as they say, but you cannot hide.

So, here he, Teller, was. He was trying mightily, after a couple of job losses, to put his life in order. Unlike Levin, though, he was not a teacher (any longer). He was now an academic administrator, and held the position of Dean of Faculty at the real-life Cascadia College. A small campus in an isolated, rural setting. A place so entirely different that his past experiences had ill-prepared him for what he found. Teller had earned his doctorate at a big-time Big Ten campus of over 35,000 students. And now, here he was, attempting to function in a place where the entire little city barely scratched the 20,000 mark, with no diversity to speak of at all. This was not a college town. The place felt stiflingly-small and claustrophobic. And amazingly conservative.

Further, the college was in a condition that he had not really appreciated.

From the start, he found his administrative peers friendly enough people. They weren’t really bad folks. But, too, Teller wasn’t sure they were the right ones to actually run a college. Teller found he did not fit so well with them. So he spent as much time as he could amongst his “own kind” … i.e., the faculty. Teller’s span of control was fairly wide-reaching on campus; he lived with the humanities folks (that’s where his office was located), but was in charge of all the liberal arts and sciences. These people were the ones who not only intellectually engaged him, but also shared their stories and lives with him.

Sure, Teller found that there were some good aspects to all that sharing. He was, after all, able to talk with them about a wide range of topics: reactions and replication; reading and reasoning; rocks and rhymes; language and logic; peace, prose and philosophy; equations and equality; literature and liberals; Iraq and irony; politics and pooh-bahs. But mostly what everyone talked about (at least with Teller) was how to cope: namely, how to manage their lives given the massive number of changes the college had undergone in the last few years, including several presidents, leadership styles, and unclear expectations.

The net effect of all that change, Teller discovered, was that most everyone was off-center most all the time. And there was little trust, might say none, between the faculty and administration. Teller, of course, as the Dean, lived his professional life at the intersection of faculty and administration and their issues. So, if the conflict on campus were the Gunfight at the OK Corral, then Teller was in the crossfire. It didn’t take long before he found himself gravely wounded.

Totally dismayed at the current state of the campus, and while expending inordinate amounts of energy to keep from being injured any further, Teller concluded that there simply was no way to live in between these two warring groups. Although he believed himself to be the consummate diplomat, none of the gunslingers involved in this fight seemed to be much interested in letting their weapons cool and engage in team- or trust-building.

Teller, simply, didn’t know what to do.

On Integrity

I recently provided some observations about the Four-Fold Way and the difficulty level associated with the concept of surrender. Now, don’t get me wrong: I continue to think that letting go of outcome is truly a hard thing to do. Wow, yes, of course.

However, recent events have me thinking a lot about the difficulty of, and price associated with, maintaining one’s integrity – and what it means to continue to speak one’s own truth in the face of remarkable resistance. That’s what it feels like I’ve been doing lately, and, frankly, I’m exhausted.

In a meeting two weeks ago, I found myself, unexpectedly, on the hot seat. Our CEO dropped by, sat down (as a result of an impromptu invitation), and joined us in a group discussion; as fate would have it, I wound up being the featured attraction. I was asked, at least a couple of times, for my views regarding some of our challenges, and, since I was specifically prompted, I answered directly and honestly. I told about my personal experience of trying to function at the nexus of two warring factions (i.e., with great levels of difficulty and stress); of an organization that lacks trust in its leadership (two individuals specifically); and of a place that is “stuck” and in dire need of a focused, protracted healing process.

I spoke for almost an hour on this occasion, in front of a small group that included a handful of the organization’s leaders. I received verbal support from only one other person, and even that was quite tentative. I felt very much alone. Isolated. And somewhat afraid.

Just that one hour totally drained me. To speak out loud a reality that is in opposition to a group’s is very hard work. It reminds me a lot of the “obedience to authority” social-psychology experiments, conducted in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram. The primary value of Milgram’s work was documentation for the willingness of individuals to engage in activities contrary to their own consciences, simply upon the command of an authority figure. Of course, I feel the desire to conform to the press of the environment and “go along” – who among us does not want to live in harmony with others around them? Especially our “bosses?” Certainly I am not immune to such forces.

I would love to be able to tell people what they want to hear. To be able to do what they want me to do. To conform. To fit in. To belong. Who doesn’t want that?

To resist. To persist. Steadfastness. To remain true to oneself. Honesty. Integrity.

Difficult. Taxing. Necessary.