Virtual Reality

I was recently reminded of just how strange and unexpected this Internet thing can be, when it comes to relationships. 

I don't even mean the match.com type relationships - that's a world I only know about peripherally, since I married my college sweetheart, though I've watched both of my parents delve in after their divorce.  (Which is a whole other post, the idea of getting divorced after 28 years of marriage.  So much for feeling safe and settled, sometimes.)  I grew up in an IBM household in New York, both parents employed there because my hometown is also IBM's and computers were everywhere.  I was online back before there was an Internet, when it was Bulletin Board Systems and text-only interfaces, and it's true that I found a few opportunities to meet up with strangers online friends starting in about 7th grade (that's, um, 1990 or so, to those keeping track).

So the concept of using the computer to meet new people is not a new one for me.  It has brought some incredibly close in-real-life friends into my life, and there have been some failed attempts... sort of like normal life, whatever that is.

But there's a second sort of relationship, the one that has no plans of ever becoming in-real-life.  I belong to two message boards.  One is comprised of a small group of women from a much larger message board, who wanted to stay in touch and were feeling a bit lost in the crowd on the other one.  The other is a knitting board, but with plenty of social, non-yarn stuff going on, as well.  I've met a few members off the board, if geography allows, but many others won't ever become more than a collection of pixels and alphanumeric characters.  And yet, they matter.  For eight weeks with my last pregnancy, I was on bedrest, and then they were my primary link to the outside world, and they more than mattered.

Most days, it's just another part of the routine: check email, update the blog, visit the boards.  If time and circumstance allows, I can stretch that into an all-day event, but can also compact it down to 15 minutes, too.  It's just habit, routine.

Every once in a while, though, something will happen that makes it other than routine.  The latest example is a woman who was in her first trimester of pregnancy and complaining of an odd illness: headache, fever, and very sore mouth and hands.  My immediate thought was hand, foot and mouth disease, which I've watched my husband and then-two-year-old daughter slog through and survive with no long-term effects.  It turned out, though, that this board member, this stranger, this almost-friend way across the country, actually had rubella.  She'd been immunized as an infant, but hadn't had an adult booster.  Hadn't known she might need one.  (Did you?  Yeah, neither did I.)  And rubella creates serious, irreparable problems for a fetus, and yesterday this woman's pregnancy ended, at about 15 weeks.

So sad.  So unfair.  And such a wake-up call.  I've never had a booster for my MMR, and am hoping to get pregnant any day now.  And now that I think of it, I'm traveling to Jamaica with my mother and sisters next month.  Pregnant or not, there's a different set of germs down there, and perhaps there are ways I can keep myself a little safer?  A little saner, even?  There aren't any required immunizations, but it turns out that there are some recommended ones.

So I'm going to a special traveler's clinic (another thing I never knew existed) on Thursday, to get an MMR booster, the first of my Hepatitis A shots (I know I got the Hep B vaccine, never needed Hep A but it's not a bad idea, what with my emergency-room job and all), and a typhoid vaccine.  Tetanus is also suggested, but I was clumsy enough to get an inchlong splinter in my foot at our last house and got a tetanus shot then.  Fabulous.

Just such an odd thing, such a tenuous connection, to go from words on a screen to a series of vaccinations.  Amazing stuff.

Comments

[BeThisWay]

How scary! There's a measles outbreak in San Diego now, too. A child contracted it in Switzerland but was asymptomatic until he got home. Then, when his Mom brought him to the doctor other unimmunized kids who were unlucky enough to be in the waiting room with him contracted it.

Lots of scary illnesses are just a plane ride away.

[Patty]

Hugs to your friend. It is so scary when something we think we are protected against comes and affects someone we care for. Take care of you.

[Liz]

It really is interesting, isn't it? There's definitely this circle of folks in the twin-blog world that have become, in a strange sense of the word, friends. We keep up with each other, we're concerned for each other, we root for each other. But we've never met, and likely never will. Odd.
In fact, we've even gotten together and started a blog not unlike this one: howdoyoudoit.wordpress.com. Funny how virtual friends can get together and do something...

[Fairly Odd Mother]

I've had a post like this kicking around in my noggin for a while b/c it IS odd to have such close friendships with people who I've met online and most I have never met in person. And, yet, I count on them, care about them and am interested in their lives.

[margaret]

We have some great friends we've met online that we even send Christmas cards to this year. One friend, when they had their first baby, we sent a box of clothes/toys too.