Apollo

When man first landed on the moon back in 1969, most of us were fixated on our black and white TV sets, watching it unfold (okay, I'm not going to totally give away my age here....but I was pretty young and do not have real specific memories of this, though I'm sure my mom made me watch it). Here in Africa, at the same time, there was a huge outbreak of conjunctivitis (infection of the eye conjunctiva, also called pink eye). Ever since then much of Africa - French speaking Africa anyway- has called pink eye "Apollo"..........I have yet to track down exactly where this big outbreak was, but somewhere on this continent, there was a big outbreak and it was associated with the moon landing.....thus "Apollo".

Last week I was the American school nurse substitute for 3 days. I saw several cases of "Apollo" myself. Within days everywhere you went you would see people with swollen red eyes. We've been very careful with hand washing, etc. but today Emily came home from school and uttered the dreadful words...."my eye hurts." I immediately ran to the pharmacy and bought some antibiotic eye drops. Apollo.....in the Hurst household!