Flu season

Okay, we all know flu season is here again. And if your neighborhood is like mine, you're being pressured to get your annual flu vaccine and especially the H1N1 vaccine, even though the H1N1 vaccine is not readily available to the general public yet.

I won't go there (any more than I already have) but have to say, I noticed the difference the flu information is making when I went to my doctor's office last week and again today. What did I notice?

All the reading material is gone.

Yep - no month-old magazines to read. No gossip papers. No nothing. Except the words on the side of the tissue box.

And the waiting rooms are now divided in half. Flueys on one side; generally run-of-the-mill, need-a-doctor's-opinion on the other. Hand sanitizer and face masks placed closer to the fluey side than the not-fluey. And, by some odd mental connection, the fluey side got individual pages of sudoku puzzles on their side. I think the logic was "You're feeling like death warmed over anyways, might as well do math, too."

Anyways, this lack of reading material (in the offices too) meant I had to read the information on the walls. And there I saw a pamphlet for - you guessed it - H1N1 information. And a brochure about virtual colonoscopies.

Virtual colonoscopies?

Virtual colonoscopies?

Virtual colonoscopies?

Is there any way to say that, or even consider it, that would reduce the "eeeeew" factor?

Needless to say, I didn't read the brochure. It might have flu germs on it, you know.