This is my public service announcement about the recent outbreak of the H1N1 influenza, affectionately (or maybe not so affectionately) called the swine flu. Who among us, after hearing the terror-filled news reports, hasn’t had our moments of thinking, “Oh my God! Should I stay home and pull down the blinds? And if I have to walk around, should I wear one of those conspicuous white masks? Because you never know, I might be the next ‘victim’ to fall ‘prey’ to the dreaded swine flu!”

Coincidentally, as the pandemic was hitting this week, the Hay House I Can Do It! San Diego conference was scheduled. I, as well as a couple of thousand audience members and a handful of authors, all had to board planes among a sea of airborne viral particles. Yes, I saw my share of facemasks at the O’Hare and San Diego airports. But interestingly, I saw not a single facemask at the San Diego Convention Center. The three weekend days were jam-packed with lectures, interviews, and important dinners and other meals, and I returned to Maine feeling thrilled about the conference—only to find that I had, indeed, come down with some version of the flu.

The first flu day, I told all my buddies on Facebook and Twitter that I was so sick that I felt like I had been run over by a truck—which, incidentally, I have personal experience with. In 1984, I was indeed run over by a truck in Portland, Oregon, and I suffered multiple fractures. In my flu delirium, I reported to people online that my model for pedestrian-vehicle collisions is not all that fatal anyway because it’s based on the “Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour” cartoons, where Wile E. Coyote, in search of the Road Runner, always gets run over by a truck. His body always ends up as mine always does (whether I get the flu or have an accidental collision), reconstructing itself and popping right back up into shape with its attitude still intact so it can continue the race enthusiastically.

Flu day number two: I began telling everyone online and whoever else would listen that I now had what I called the kitten flu. The kitten flu? Why would I call it the kitten flu? Well, in our spare time, we tend to want to name things. And the powers that be are going to use the scariest and most frightening words to get people’s attention. We didn’t have the pig or the piglet flu recently. No, we had the swine flu. Well, maybe society needed to make a catastrophe out of the whole flu issue, but I wasn’t going to. I was going to name my flu the kitten flu because the kitten is an animal that isn’t really all that threatening, and it’s resiliant. Kittens can roll, and they can fall, and they can collide, but they always kind of bounce back.

The second reason I named my flu the kitten flu is because in my neuropsychiatry practice, I once asked a patient how he felt. He happened to be a little “under the weather” (another term, I might add, that we used to use for the flu that wasn’t as scary as the swine flu). So what did the patient say? He looked at me somberly, and he said, “I feel weak as a kitten.” I thought the phrase was so funny that I laughed out loud! I thought it must have been a symptom of delirium or some other brain confusion until I asked some of his family members what “weak as a kitten” meant. They laughed and told me that it was an old Maine phrase for “I am weak with the flu.” Weak as a kitten.

Of course, in the old days, people still died of the flu. Every year, no matter what type of influenza it is, the influenza kills a few people who for one reason or another have weakened immune systems. The best response is to buff up your immune systems and your sense of emotional and physical resilience year-round. Then, when you hear about the latest flu outbreak (and there will be many—it’s part of life on Planet Earth you know), you will realize that even if you do get the flu and feel under the weather, weak as a kitten, or like you’ve been run over by a truck, you have the potential power within yourself to snap back like Wile E. Coyote.