West Nile Virus

While walking out to my car Friday morning I found a dead bird.

She (although I have no idea of the sex I will call it she because all birds seem female to me) looked peaceful, eyes closed, and not a mark on her. It was as if one moment she was sitting in the tree and then bang, dead on the ground.

I didn't provide a proper burial. Picking her up by one of her perfectly intact legs I tossed her into the trash dumpster.

So it just so happens Friday was my last day of work for the firm I was employed with until last Friday- which means Monday - which is now tomorrow- I begin a new job.

After I do anything, and I literally mean anything, I will roll it around in my head for a while. The time frame for "a while" is relatively dynamic. The parking place I choose may stay with me for 10-25 minutes, whereas I'm still thinking about my selection of the college I attended- and I graduated from college in '86- so theres that.

A job change could peculate for up to a decade easily, so its right now this decision in the center of my brain, right behind my forehead...so when I find a bird on the ground with no visible injury I begin to think- what exactly does that mean, and because I have made this major decision in the last two weeks I apply any meaning that may exist to this decision.

So then I go through all the reasons for leaving my old job for this new job (which is sort of an old job as this was a firm I worked out before), and the more I think about it the more I find myself vacillating, which is stupid because its too late - but that doesn't stop me.

And then at some point I considered the possibility that finding a dead bird was just that - I found a bird that died, and for a very brief amount of time I was oddly comforted by the potential meaninglessness.

Yesterday while watching my daughters play in the wading pool, which when not a wading pool is a pig water trough, I caught a mosquito just as it began bite me on the forearm.

And then it occurred to me-dead bird- West Nile Virus...right?

Infection with WNV can be asymptomtic (no symptoms), or can lead to West Nile fever or severe West Nile disease.

It is estimated that about 20% of people who become infected with WNV will develop West Nile fever. Symptoms include fever, headache, tiredness, and body aches, occasionally with a skin rash (on the trunk of the body) and swollen lymph glands. While the illness can be as short as a few days, even healthy people have reported being sick for several weeks.

The symptoms of severe disease (also called neuroinvasive disease, such as West Nile encephalitis or meningitis or West Nile poliomyelitis) include headache, high fever, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, and paralysis. It is estimated that approximately 1 in 150 persons infected with the West Nile virus will develop a more severe form of disease.

The incubation period in humans (i.e., time from infection to onset of disease symptoms) is 2-15 days, so I could have it and not know for another two weeks.

I feel the sensation of the symptoms ascend upon me as I write this now...

I don't know maybe I shouldn't have quit that job...