I haven’t, but it’s galloping all around where I live. Several students and one of my student workers (and her children) currently have it, or at least believe they do. (The doctors and ERs have been diagnosing it but for some reason- I assume cost- aren’t actually conducting the test for it.)
I’m curious how it compares to “regular” flus- is it basically the same symptoms? More severe? Less severe? Just curious as to what it is I’m bathing in hand sanitizer in hopes of avoiding.
From what I extrapolated from an anticle yesterday, it seems as though they’re sort of expecting twice the number of deaths in the US from it than “regular” flu strains: typically ~40,000 deaths/year vs ~90,000.
The article was really poorly written though. It opened by stating that the majority of the deaths will probably be children and young adults, but didn’t give a single reason why that would be. We expect young children to die from it because they unfortunately do, but the 1918 flu was really unusual because so many healthy young adults died. Why do they think it’ll be like that strain? Do they even? It also said that people with asthma are at a higher risk of dying too, but I want to know how bad a case of asthma are they talking about?
At work several colleagues have had it. It was very mild and they were back at work within a couple of days.
My eight year old niece had a dose too, also very mild. She was off school for three days I think.
I heard second hand , so treat it as such.
The older population may have some sort of resistance based on a vacsination given during the late sixties , early seventies to cover a variation on the spanish flu.
Declan
They think it will be like that strain because it’s acting like that already. A disproportionate number of hospitalizations from swine flu have been in the under-30 age group, compared with the usual profile of “normal” flu, where the majority of those severely affected are over 65. This site is only for Illinois - it’s the first one I found with an age breakdown. The chart is on the lower right-hand side.
I had a mild case of it. Slight cough, mild fever. Very tired and achy for two days, then low on energy and a bit sore for about a week. I rested as much as I could but even at my worst I could go to the doctor and shop for food. Normally when I get the flu I get nasty secondary infections - ear and sinus infections but I was over this with no problems. Other people I know who had it also had fairly mild symptoms, so it is certainly possible to get off lightly. However, the news reports I have read from doctors say to expect to be bedridden for a few days at least.
It was fun talking to the nurses before I saw the doctor. They seemed pretty bored when I described my flu-like symptoms (fever and tiredness). Then they asked me if I had been in contact with anyone with swine flu - they looked surprised when I said yes but not too worried.
When I said, “Yeah I think about ten or twenty of my students had it recently”, they literally took a step away from me and got very serious. Never seen a nurse that bothered by disease before. It was like being a leper.
Later, they stuck some metal wire up my nose to take a mucus sample. I swear they scraped my brain with that thing. Most uncomfortable.
It rampaged through one of the Squadrons here.
Sick leave for seven days, with tylenol and bed rest.
I had it back in June–caught it after a trip up to NYC. Like Manwich, I had what must have been a mild case. I probably would never have known it was Swine Flu if my daughter hadn’t had an ear infection at the same time. When I took her to Minor Emergency for a high fever, I had them check me out too since I was there, but I probably wouldn’t have bothered if it had been just me.
Symptoms were a low-grade fever, general achyness, a bit of a runny/stuffy nose, and extreme, extreme fatigue. My husband did have to stay home from work one day because the fatigue made me incapable of taking care of our little girl (a very active toddler), but as far as the flu goes, I’ve definitely had worse.
I should probably add that I’m pregnant, so I wasn’t able to take Tamiflu or anything much stronger than Tylenol. The doctor prescribed Tamiflu for both my husband and daughter to try and keep them from catching it from me, and they were both fine.
Perhaps this should be a new thread in gq, but I don’t understand how all of these random cases that crop up can be said to be H1N1 without the real test. How can a medical professional be sure that it’s not “regular” flu?
Forgot to comment on this, but GOD YES. That flu test sucks! And they did it on me twice, “just to be sure.” I’d rather have just a regular old shot, thankyouverymuch.
drpepper, why do you think these cases haven’t had the “real” test? With me, they could tell there in the office that I had Type A flu, and the fact that I had just returned from New York made them suspect swine flu, but they had to send it off to the Health Department for confirmation. Someone from the HD called me about a week later, after I was already feeling completely better, and let me know that it was confirmed and then proceeded to ask me all kinds of questions about my symptoms, where had I gone, who had I had contact with, etc.
Almost the same thing happened to me. They tested me (both nostrils, make me tickle just thinking about it) because I had been in contact with swine flu. By the time I got the results three days later, I was over the worst of it. A couple of weeks later a got a call asking me about symptoms and duration.
So far, my closest connection to the swine flu is that my son lamented this morning on his way out the door that he didn’t have it, since that would mean he could be out of school. His next wish is that someone else in school come down with it, so that they shut the school down altogether. I comforted him by reminding him that he’s only been back in school since Monday, so maybe he was exposed then and it’s incubating. With luck, he could be sick by the weekend. He left unconvinced.
One thing that I’ve been wondering, based on nothing more scientific than the vague memory that those who caught the Spanish Flu in the spring and summer of 1918 were immune to the deadly mutation that swept through that autumn, is if it wouldn’t make sense to catch the swine flu now and get it over with before the virus has the opportunity to turn more lethal. I’m a big fan of immunizations, but I have the impression that the testing on the vaccine that should be available soon is nowhere near complete, so what if it turns out it doesn’t provide any or enough protection against H1N1?
I’m not a worrier, but I’m starting to worry that I’m not worried enough about swine flu.
I don’t know. I do know I’ve had the flu in the last few months, but there is no way to distinguish it from any-other-flu-virus-flu without extra tests which in Spain are only performed in serious, hospitalized cases.
If everybody I know who’s had the flu in the last 3 months happened to get it from that virus, it’s close to one hundred people.
A friend of mine and his daughter both contracted it quite early on, when they were still doing the proper tests. He reported that it was milder than other flus he has had.
A couple of people in my building at work have had it, but only mild cases and nobody’s been treated with Tamiflu at all.
Bizarrely, our HR dept decided that anyone who thought they’d got swine flu should stay at home and take 5 days (one working week) off which wasn’t going to count as leave or sickness absence, provided they called the NHS helpline (which seems to happily diagnose ever caller with the flu whether they’ve got it or not). I am surprised there wasn’t more abuse of this system as it was carte blanche for a week’s break.
I think I had it. I wasn’t tested but had all the symptoms and was prescribed Tamiflu. But as the nurse who handed out the meds said, “without a test it could be swine flue or any one of a thousand other viruses”
It was relatively mild (for flu, but was bad comapred to a cold), it was over two weeks ago my Tamiflu ended and I still have a blockage in my ear due to excessive mucous build up due to the virus.
Not a great experience, but not a fatal one. I shall certainly have the jab this winter.
Right now, our state Health Department is only doing confirmatory testing on specimens from hospitalized patients, and a couple of other groups based on specific symptoms and criteria. When a swab tests positive we call for more information on the patient, which we then relay to the Health Department, who makes the call on whether or not to proceed. For the vast majority of cases (which isn’t that many, honestly, at my hospital), we’ve pretty much been told to assume that any positive “Influenza A” test is a case of H1N1, since seasonal (“regular”) flu at this time of year is extremely rare. All that might change later in the year when the flu season gets here, but I don’t know how much effort will go into pinpointing the type of flu in the average case. As far as I know, there isn’t much a doctor can do differently in terms of treating swine flu vs seasonal flu, so the identification of the causative virus is mostly to monitor the spread of the disease across the country. For your average sick person testing positive for the flu, it’s not going to matter which flu it is, so it makes sense to conserve resources for now.
I’m not a doctor, I’m just the medical technologist in the lab who gets to test your gooey mucous swab for influenza. For the record, I hate those metal nasopharyngeal swabs as much as the patients do. When I pull them out of their protective tubes for testing, the springiness of the wire makes the swab bounce around - more chance of getting your nasty flu bits all over the place. Oh, and if that swab didn’t feel like it tickled your brain when your specimen was collected, they ain’t doing it right.
I had some kind of flu back in May, immediately after a flight up to Houston. This was a time when it was primarily in Mexico (I live on the border). I was sick as a dawg, with temps over 105. Most of the discomfort was from the fever, and I was sick for about 10 days or more. I never, ever, get sick (I’m 48). The one good thing that came out of it is that I was too sick to smoke, and have been smoke-free now for almost 4 months.
I think I had it. I know I got exposed to it. I was in the hospital in May and they were bringing in confirmed cases and confining them off into virtual isolation as best they could. Unfortunately, I was still very close physically to them. I came home and literally could not get off of the couch for four days. Even going to the bathroom required an hour or more of psyching myself up and I usually crawled (slowly). I was very achy and very, very tired. I can’t prove that it was the swine flu because I didn’t want to go to the emergency room for it unless absolutely necessary because of what I saw but I have had the real flu once before and it was roughly similar. The real flu is a lot more serious than most people give it credit for. It isn’t just a bad cold.
When my husband had the scrapy wire sampling which turned up plain old garden variety influenza A, the doctor came back in the room with a mask on. Some things you don’t mess with if you can avoid it. Our medical center also requests that if you have fever and/or are coughing/sneezing, you wear a mask, which we provide. This was all put in place before the H1N1 “swine” flu outbreak.
In the ophthalmology office I work in, conjunctivitis (aka “pink eye”) results in the same “leper”-type treatment - but in a professional manner! - complete with a post-patient visit rubdown with antiviral/antibacterial scrubbing wipes over anything you might have touched.