There have been some diaries on this site questioning whether to get the flu vaccines, particularly H1N1. I don't know if any minds can be changed, but I come from a close knit family. This story has come down to me, about how the Spanish flu affected my grandparents and their young family. This is their story.
It starts with my Grandparents. In 1918, they were a young farm family, largely self sufficient in that long ago time, growing most of their own food, with hopefully enough extra to sell or barter for sugar and flour and tobacco and such. The call to arms to save democracy had bypassed their world to the extent that grandad was too old at 34 to be prime fighting age, his oldest son was only 8, and as a farmer, his work was needed to provide food for the doughboys overseas. Time passed. It was, according to my grandmother who told me this story, a lot of hard work, but a good life. Needs were simple, family was close, there was enough to eat. And the war ended. Never a bad thing to end a war, but this time the war came home in a personal way. The returning doughboys brought back a nasty bug (and not just the one's caught in Paris brothels), the influenza, specifically the Spanish influenza. Like the current H1N1, it hit hardest, not at the oldest, but at young adults who were in the full bloom of health. Grandad caught it about the first of December. To fully understand how serious this was, you need to remember in those days, this farm was wholly unmechanized. Grandad was the only one strong enough to hitch the mule to the plow, and without that there was no farming, with all that meant. This left my grandmother, with four kids: ages 8, 6, 4, and Cecil the baby, at just 2. Oh, and did I mention that she was 8 months pregnant with the child who was to become my Dad?
Serious times indeed. Grandad lay at death's door, liable to succomb at any time. Winter was setting in, with spring planting to come. Another mouth to feed was due at any time. And then sorrow upon sorrow, the baby, Cecil, caught the flu. He only lived a few days, then died. When my grandmother would speak in years to come of hard times, this was what she was talking about. There were no treatments for the flu, and who could afford treatments if they existed? One child dead, another on the way, a husband hovering between life and death, three small children to look after, and the worry of who would be next to catch the malady. Dad was born three days before Christmas, with Grandad still in a coma. My grandmother nursed grandad slowly back to health over the winter, but by spring he was still too weak to work. He did not realize that one child had died, and the baby was a new child. It took almost a year for him to recover.
Seasons wait for neither death nor grief. To do the spring planting, grandmother hitched herself to the plow with the oldest boy, at age 8, guiding it. By that device, farm life went on. She left her 6 year old daughter in charge of the 2 younger children in the house, and by the way, get food ready to cook on the wood burning stove. And in her spare time, while grandad was recovering, my grandmother taught him to read.
I will end the story there, because they recovered to a level of normalcy. But more hard times were to come, as they always seem to. The depression was to hit hard, and there was a war right behind. Both of those are stories are for a different time.
But there is a point I want to make. The flu kills. The flu disables. Get your vaccination.