Labour Day Classic Stew

Get out the cold f/x. The cold virus has been unleashed.

Over the years working in the doctor's office and the medi clinic before that, I noticed a trend emerge every fall. As precise as a German train schedule the parents called into the office for an appointment for their school age son or daughter because of their cold symptoms. It was always the third week of September.
The children went back to school usually after the Labour Day weekend. They gathered together after a two month long break away from each other. Rested, relaxed and in relative good health they filed into their new classrooms for their new year. They mingled and giggled and shared and hugged. All the while they were brewing up the newest batch of cold virus in the best petri dish ever known to exist, their classrooms.
One by one the children succumbed to their virus stew and ended up sick with a cold. Children don't usually like to share unless it is unwittingly. It was not long before their parents (and grandparents) became the recipients of their newest petri dish virus stew. In the clinics we began to see the parents around the Thanksgiving long weekend. The parents were not as resilient as their children. They were however dedicated to their work at the office. Nothing as simple as a cold would keep them home.
Off to work they went sneezing and coughing their germs around the office and laying down their germs on every thing they touched. The office petri dish brewed and bubbled until the parent's coworkers without children came down with the cold. We saw these patients in early November. Appropriately this would be the time the children would be back into the doctor with their third or so cold. As the community became sick, the immune suppressed became sicker. Nurses worked feverishly to combat the flu with the newest batch of the flu shot.
The medical office became hectic with the flu and cold patients. The patients came in sicker. The number of ill patients from all ages and backgrounds became overwhelming. The office cold and flu peaked just before the Christmas holiday. The patients came in looking for what I called “the magic wand” treatment. They wanted the doctor to make them better because it was Christmas. They couldn't possibly be sick because... The excuses ran the gamut. None the less we sent them home to recuperate from their illness with some TLC advise – rest.
Thus the Christmas vacation began. The children and many office workers went home for their two week break. They rested and mostly recuperated from the Labor Day Classic viral stew.
We would see the cycle repeat itself once again in the third week of January. Usually the cold and flu would hang on until the sunny days of spring.
This is not scientific, but it is what I noticed when I worked as a nurse in the office. Thus when I had my granddaughter over for a sleepover this weekend, it was really a ride down memory lane when she arrived with a cold.
It hasn't changed.

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