I have been thinking a lot about viruses this year. Learning about them too.
Until 2019, I associated viruses with the oft heard pediatrician's "it's just a virus" when I'd brought one of the kids in for a suspected ear infection or strep throat. Viruses meant no antibiotic prescription. They kept you home from school for a few days. They caused you to blow through a box or two of tissues, but otherwise, in this house and in this town anyway, they seemed like the diagnosis you hoped to hear.
2019 changed that for me when I was diagnosed with cancer caused by a virus that gets into your cells and, perhaps triggered by some additional gene mutation, stops them from performing normally. It may take decades before the cancer is discernibly manifest. This cancer would have been prevented by a vaccine, had I been young enough at the time it was developed to receive it. Hopefully, though, the treatment, paid by health insurance, has cured me, and I will be cancer-free moving forward. But only time will tell. Doctors don't know everything. And there will be the residual side effects, not the least of which are mental.
In 2020, covid19, the corona virus, came to a city near all of us. At first, the president likened it to the flu. "Just a virus." And like a cancer, or AIDS or HPV or Hepatitis B, this virus learned to hijack our own immune response system and cellular machinery to propagate, and in some cases, overwhelm our capacity to clear it.
What will we find out about its aftermath
years from now?
years from now?
Fortunately, as we emerge from November 2020, there is real light at the end of the tunnel. If we can just hold on until the VACcinATION.
Here's hoping that my designs bring you a healthy dose of levity and joy. Until 2021 --
-Alison