Cleanliness Is Next To ... ummm... Never Mind

Week Two:

Went to the chemo bar for my 5-FU refill and had some blood work done. The individual counts are mainly OK. My platelets are good, so I can still clot after all those needle sticks. My white blood cell count is down, not very far down though, and this is expected. However, this means I'm on the way to being immunocompromised, i.e. less able to fight off infection.

We all live and work in places filled with germs. Both our kids are in elementary school, so they'll be bringing home an assortment of corona-, rhino-, adeno- and whatever other viridae cause the common cold. At work (and I don't have to tell you this), any number of people - who should damn well know better - don't wash their hands after using the restroom and make it a point to touch each and every door handle and light switch in the building. There are several of these people on each floor, so they can cover this 10-story building with an economy of effort.

So what steps do you take? Well, a popular infection countermeasure (sounds like a spy story now) is to buy the gel-based hand-sanitizer and neurotically apply it to your hands after any contact with the rest for the world. So I tried to buy a couple of big bottles at Target.

Couldn't find any.

Not a single bottle.

Why not? Because panicked parents, fearing a swine flu pandemic that will give their precious children a fever (keeping them at home and forcing the parents to stay home too), have stripped the store shelves of hand-sanitizer. You can identify the children of these parents because, in a few days, the skin on their hands will be dry and peeling due from repeated use of the alcohol-containing gel. The domino effect will then be evident as these parents return to the stores to buy every bottle of skin moisturizer. So, heed my warning, go buy your Aveeno now.

The take-home lesson is this: Don't get cancer when parents are doing their back-to-school shopping.