Swine Flu: A Primer

See Mommy. See Mommy cough. *cough* *cough* *cough* Mommy is coughing. Now Mommy is sleeping. This is not fun. Go find Daddy. He is not coughing. He will play football with you. Yay! Daddy! Fun Daddy! Run, run, run in the fall leaves with Daddy!

Seriously and for real, swine flu is less fun than having your wisdom teeth removed. Ice cream doesn't even sound good when you feel like this. In case you haven't yet had friends come down with it, here are a few things I've learned in the past week in the haze of hacking that is this delightful strain of flu.

1. H1N1 does not necessary start with a high fever or come on suddenly. It's pretty common for seasonal flu to hit so fast that you can be happily out to lunch with friends at 1pm and lying in a puddle of your own aching exhaustion on the couch, completely beset with all the worst flu symptoms at 3pm. I can tell you from experience, though, that a few days of coughing, coming from deep in your chest, without any fever or other symptoms, can be the opening act of H1N1. The CDC website notes that "People may be infected with the flu, including 2009 H1N1 and have respiratory symptoms without a fever." I wish that line had been in bigger, bolder type, though, because I assumed for those first three days that of course I didn't have the flu, since I had no fever. So I pushed myself to keep teaching, running errands, and doing all the other things that a busy mom does, until I got to the point where I felt like I couldn't take a deep breath and was worried that the "cold" I thought I had was turning into pneumonia. Then I went home. THEN, four days in, I spiked a fever. A whole group of graduate students at my university have since told me that when they got the flu in August, that's precisely how it started for them: three days of coughing, which got progressively worse, and then the fever and headaches set in.

2. Tamiflu can do a great job with the headaches, body aches, and fever. Two hours after taking my first dose of Tamiflu, my headache and neck aches were almost completely gone. They say you should start Tamiflu within 48 hours of the onset of flu symptoms for it to do any good. I started Tamiflu the afternoon of the first day I had fever, which was on day FOUR of the coughing, and it still worked like a charm. I know that Tamiflu is pretty heavily guarded right now: your doctor won't prescribe it if she isn't pretty certain that you have the flu. It has done little or nothing to alleviate the cough, the gunk in my lungs, or the feeling that my chest is tight when I take a breath. But given how horrific I felt at the doctor's office, I'm very grateful for the relief it did provide for the aches and pains.

3. Nothing is better than rest. You already know this, but it's much easier to enforce for our children than for ourselves. One commonly-listed symptom of flu is "extreme exhaustion." Here's what that means: you will be home in bed, not that sleepy, but feel that the process of using the remote to scroll through all those annoying menus is simply too much work, and that perhaps keeping your eyes on moving images on the television will be too much work, and so you will not watch a movie. That's right: you will be too tired to face the extreme effort of turning on the television set using the remote control that is lying next to you. What should you do? Sleep.

4. Your family has already been exposed to you, so you don't have to wear that mask they gave you at the doctor's office in the house. Assuming they aren't super-high-risk people with compromised immune systems, you can be around your family while sick, since they were already exposed to contagious you before the symptoms manifested. That said, use separate dishes, glasses, and towels; wash your hands every time you blow your nose or cough into your hands; do not kiss them; and do your best not to purposely/carelessly hand them extra germs.

5. The rest of the world has NOT already been exposed to you, so stay home. Send someone else to pick up that book you need at the library. Let your husband drop the kids at daycare. Get a substitute to run that meeting. Eat that box of pasta in the back of the pantry instead of running out to the grocery store. Especially while you have a fever (just because it's reduced due to Tamiflu or ibuprophen doesn't mean you don't still have a fever), try to limit your exposure to other people.

6. That nose swab test that they do to confirm that you have the flu? When the nurse says, "this won't hurt; it will just be a little uncomfortable," she is lying through her teeth and with every fiber of her being. Here's what that test feels like: imagine you are an ancient Egyptian, and the nurse is the person whose job it is to collect your brain before you are mummified. You know how they used to do that, don't you? With a sharp stick poked up through your sinuses. The only difference is that the brain collector with the sharp stick back then was working on a conveniently DEAD person who could not feel, while you are very much alive and have sinuses that are already tender from all that nose blowing. (A neti pot worked wonders, by the way, for clearing out and soothing those sinuses pretty rapidly after the near-mummification experience.)

On the up side, having swine flu means you get to have constant reaffirmation that you picked the best husband in the world, as he spends lots of extra time doing the drop-off and pick-up of both of your children who literally could not go to schools further apart and still be in the same district, and then comes home and cooks dinner and cleans up after it too, and then takes the kids to the zoo for five hours on Saturday so that you can sleep. You will get to see how quickly your son is becoming a better reader, as you watch him read to his little sister in the indoor tent. You will learn that you have done a good job working on empathy with your children, when your three-year-old makes you endless cards and messages saying (in scribble which has to be translated), "I heart love you" and your five-year-old tells you on the day you feel your very worst that HE will cook the breakfast for everyone so that you don't have to--and then he proceeds to make scrambled eggs and set the table.

I won't tell you to enjoy the flu. Because you won't. But it might make you grateful for your wonderful family, as it did me. I wish you all well!

P.S. If you or yours are suffering from the flu and need an easy distraction, may I recommend the re-released Snow White? Check out my review here. It's a darker, grimmer movie than you might recall, with a happy ending that makes it perfect for days when you are feeling lousy. And if you can bear to read, the review gives you a link to a totally fascinating history of cartoon making at its inception.