Lessons about the pandemic from my mom’s strokes

This is a picture of my mom at my high school graduation in 1979. It was taken a couple months after she had a minor stroke. Three months later, she would have a series of major ones that left her paralyzed for the rest of her life.

I’ve been thinking about her a lot during this pandemic. As case numbers have spiked, especially among the unvaccinated, I think about her actions before and between her strokes. It reminds me of the dangers of not following the best medical advice, but it also helps me understand why people resist it. While I can’t condone those who refuse to take the vaccine when it is readily available, I can understand why. I won’t ridicule them or say some snarky thing about Darwin, but I also know the dangers of ignoring obvious risks.

We never think anything bad can happen to us. We don’t worry about the holes in the roof when it isn’t raining. And the years leading up to Mom’s strokes provided plenty of warnings we didn’t see or chose to ignore.

She grew up in the “More Doctors Recommend Camels” era when smoking wasn’t just acceptable, it seemed perfectly safe and normal. So was a diet of meats, starches, fats, and sugar. Her father had heart trouble, but it was just assumed that nothing could be done about it. There were no statin drugs. While doctors knew about the importance of exercise…