Summertime Cabin Fever

Here in the Arizona desert we get cabin fever during the summer when it’s too hot to spend much time outdoors.   It’s hitting me hard today and I just want to go outside and do something worthy of summertime fun.   When I was a kid I so enjoyed summertime activities like swimming in the pool and playing outside for hours with neighborhood kids.   Summertime clothes were light and colorful.   Wearing Naot sandals, with shorts and spaghetti strap tops was cool.   Sometimes you put your swimsuit on with a light T-shirt and shorts so you could go out visiting friends knowing you were going swimming later.

One of my favorite summertime activities was going to summer camp.   Unlike most of the kids I knew, I attended summer camp twice every summer.   One week I would spend at the MDA Summer Camp and later in the summer I would spend two weeks at the Lions Camp for Crippled Children.   Back in the 1970s it was okay to say crippled.   Summer camp designed specifically for kids using wheelchairs and needing special helpers was always a blast.

Recently I learned that this year’s MDA Summer Camp was canceled after 11 cases of H1N1 flu were reported from kids who attended camps around the country.   MDA quickly canceled the remaining schedule of campus for this year.   When you have severe muscle weakness getting the flu or other respiratory viruses can wreak havoc on your body, and in some cases lead to death.   MDA is very cautious and does their due diligence to screen camp staff and counselors, but with something like flu is not always possible to know when someone is carrying the virus even though they’re not sick.   I guess that’s what happened this year.

Hopefully next year all those kids will get to enjoy summer camp again.