A winter flu in New York and staring into space
SETS THE CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS
EVERY year, around this time, I remember to get my flu shot. My diligence is due to the happenstance of my being in New York on January 28, 1968, when the Challenger space craft exploded, after just 73 seconds of its journey into space and the entire crew perished. At the same time the Filipino flu raged through New York.
On board Challenger, Christa McAuliffe was on her way to becoming the first ordinary US female civilian to travel into space.
Christa, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew.
She underwent months of shuttle training, but then, beginning January 23, she had to wait six long days as the launch countdown was repeatedly delayed.
Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off from Cape Canaveral only to explode just seconds into the launch, leaving what looked like a fiery tuning fork hanging in the sky.
The more Christa’s Irish connection was flagged up, the more my thoughts turned to McAuliffe’s, our family pharmacy in Sandymount.
Wrapped in a blanket, sweating profusely, a victim of the virulent Filipino flu ravaging New York, I was perched on a kitchen chair looking at a portable black and white 12-inch television, which was fuzzy and unfocused. Much like myself.
As news of the Challenger disaster became known, the television stations began changing their programmes willy nilly.
As it happens, I was watching the A Team when the first pictures of the disaster began to go viral.
My temperature was 102 and I was delirious and had begun hallucinating. One moment I thought I was with B.A. Baracus dodging a swarm of security personnel deployed to lock down the launch site. Moments later, who arrived in a vintage chopper but Murdoch!
McAuliffe’s back home was where I was needed at that moment. A friendly face and a Xanax.
I’ve always been a pill freak. I worked it out. If some guy is prepared to sit up in a lab finding cures for the diseases that ravage us, I say let him off the leash. This attitude is confirmed in our family – we don’t keep family photos, we hang on to the X-rays. And our motto is, ‘I demand a fifth opinion.’
I don’t mind people knowing that I am willing to take any legitimate medicine which comes my way.
Only twice have I taken pills as a stimulant in social circumstances. I didn’t like pills and I am always mystified when the inquest reveals that the victim had ingested a poisonous amount of the drugs, enough to kill them.
ISAW, fairly recently, that Dr Timothy Leary took an acid tablet in his final hours. Dr Leary is the man who urged America to ‘Turn on, tune in and drop out’ and gave a whole generation the imprimatur to ingest anything from slug pellets to elephants’ tranquilisers.
Woodstock was a watershed for my generation. It gave the ordinary punters a licence to be themselves and indulge themselves, and one festival changed the course of American music and social history.
I sometimes wonder if I was to refill all the prescriptions I have had over the years would it amount to a full suitcase, a full cupboard, a full spare room? Ask my liver.
I recovered from the Filipino Flu but January 28 is a kind of sacred day in my life when I think of the bravery of Christa McAuliffe and her noble efforts to be the first ‘laywoman’ in space.