During my fight with chemo and lung surgery, I came to refer to cancer tumors as “bad marshmallows”. It was a term I borrowed from another cancer patient and I use it in place of the word “tumor”.
All too often, people hear the word cancer and immediately associate it with death. Our society is built like that I guess. The same thing occurred with the word “covid”. I now coin the term “bad breath” to be used in place of covid. Like cancer, especially now, covid does not mean instant death. Indeed, it simply means one has the virus infection that comes from it......bad breathing.
It took almost a full year of being cautious for my wife and I to get our vaccinations. We got the Moderna shots. Throughout the entire pandemic pandemonium, we seemed to be just sitting there awaiting our time to contract the dreadful covid death sentence. By the grace of the Good Lord, however, we never came down with it. Oh yeah, we had family members get it, but none died. A close friend did die from it though. And then numbers spiked in spite of vaccines and people panicked all over again....and we sat and continued to await our turn.
Well, the thought occurred to me that it’s not death until death occurs. Until then, it’s bad breath. My wife got out and began volunteering to give the shots at a local, large vaccination center. She is a retired Clinical Nurse Specialist. She faced it head on like so many other responders. I asked her one evening, “Hon, what’s the best remedy for bad breath?” She answered, “Brush your teeth, use mouthwash. If that doesn’t work, you may have tonsil stones.” Don’t wait on your turn for bad breath. Get the shots.
