SWINE FLU, OH MY

So much has been written and so much more has been said about this year's flu scare that I decided to get my voice in on this! Now, I know that it isn't swine flu ... really; it's A/H1N1. Actually, swine flu came through the United States three times in the twentieth century and twice it got me. That's why I have been upset when so many people pooh-poohed the whole thing and could see no reason in anyone's or any school district's taking any preventative measures that they wouldn't ordinarily take for the seasonal flu.

I don't think that most people who have complained knew that there was any relationship whatsoever between the swine flu of 1918 and that which we might yet have in 2009. The pandemic of 1918 was called Spanish flu because the Spanish people spoke up and declared that Spain had a major epidemic on their hands and thus the flu that year was called Spanish flu. It really wasn't theirs. In fact, it probably began in China just as did the swine flu of 1957 and the swine flu of 1968. (And did you know that the Spanish flu was A/H1N1?  Sound familiar?)  

The Asian flu (we called it) in 1957 is one of which I have a very personal memory. I was in college, living in a dormitory, a dormitory that suddenly one week was filled with very sick females. One day, Peggy and Bert began making potato soup for those unable to walk to the dining hall; and the next day, those two were out trying to recruit others to help them as the number of sick had doubled. (I don't have any idea whether the school knew just how many were ill yet. It was a weekend and school activities continued.)

What I do remember was waking up in the middle of the night to walk around the corner to the bathroom and hearing my head hit the concrete floor of the hall. Yes, apparently, I had fainted; and when Peggy, who lived right there on the corner, heard me crash, she came running with a thermometer and I was put to bed. 

I was sick, very sick. High fever. Horrible headache. In fact, I ached everywhere. And violent chills. It's the chills that I remember most. Fever. Chills. Wet sheets. And debilitating fatigue. Monday morning, I made my way to the infirmary only to discover there was no place to sit. Women everywhere were sitting in the floor waiting to be seen. Finally, at some point the doctor came out and told us that he was asking that the school be closed.

In those days, communication was by long distance operator and coins in the pay telephone. And transportation was by parents. There were few cars on campus and mostly seniors owned those few. I don't remember just how the word got around. I do remember the doctor telling us to call our parents to come and get us and I remember that my mother did come. She took a car filled with others who could meet their parents in Cleburne and get home that way. 

I don't remember how many or who, but I know that those who were not sick weren't feeling too good at that time. Medication for the flu in those days at the school was Benadryl and the original antibiotic, sulfa. My mother was an RN and at least, I know that I was well cared for at home, but I don't remember any of it. 

At home, there were stories about the flu on TV; and even though we didn't have 24/7 news as we do these days, we had enough news programs that I remember seeing what looked like gyms filled with cots containing sick college students in other states who had not been able to get home and were being cared for in large groups. That picture alone made me quite alert when I heard this year that once again swine flu was alive in Texas and prowling the state. And it is photographs like that that caused officials this year to close entire school districts. 

When we went back to school that year, we all went back exhausted. It seems that most of the schools closed for that week as the swine flu that we knew as Asian flu ravaged the college campuses in Texas and most of us who had it were weak for the rest of the semester. But all of us did come back and that was far better for us than being one of the more than 70,000 in the United States who died that fall.

In 1968, swine flu came around again and this time it was called Hong Kong flu; and this time I was teaching school. One of my very favorite students was being married and I was determined not to get sick so that I could be there for her wedding. This time, I fainted again; but my head didn't bounce off a concrete floor. No, this time, I was coming down the stairs (in straight skirt, girdle, stockings, high heels, the entire works: that's how we did it in those days) and I fell to the bottom of those stairs. 

It didn't seem to hurt anything other than my vanity; but I did leave and go home. And oh was I sick again. This time it seemed to last and last; and I did go to the wedding somewhere in the midst of all that: before, after, or in the middle of having the flu I don't know. I was just sick an awfully long time. Again it was high fever and chills, horrible headaches, body aches,  extreme fatigue; and it went on and on, night and day, only abating for a short while each time I took aspirin.

Every day, I heard about more teachers going home sick; and one day Mr. Jones, my principal, called and asked if I could come back to school. He was a wonderful principal and I would have done anything for him and thus, I went back. I didn't last an entire day before I was back home: fever, chills, ache.

Oh, I know what the real flu feels like; I also know that the flu isn't something that lasts two or three days and you are right back to work. Flu is a two-week monster. After two weeks I went to my doctor for that official piece of paper that said that I had really been ill and out of school. When he asked whether I felt as if a freight train had run over me and left me there to die, I knew that he understood just how I felt; and so I felt free to ask him just how long I would feel this bad. When he told me that I probably would not feel well for at least six months, I swore that I was not going to do this ever again.

And now, perhaps, you understand why I have become upset each time someone said something like, "Oh we have flu every year. What's the big deal?" Well, the big deal, my dear, is that swine flu isn’t like the seasonal flu that we see every year. The big deal is that swine flu is virulent. When one in the family has it, everyone else has it. In 1957 entire towns had it at the same time.

And the symptoms that go along with swine flu are more violent than for the seasonal flu. There is always fever, usually well over 100 degrees; and with the fever, there come chills, body aches, terrible headaches, and extreme fatigue. And it goes on and on. You aren't over it in a weekend of good sleep. Swine flu as experienced in the United States lingers; and then when you finally feel well enough to go back to work, it hangs on just enough to make you feel terrible as you work.

Nope, I have had it  ... twice; and I do not want it ever again. And I know that this year’s swine flu isn’t finished. When it starts in the spring, it continues in the fall and finishes only as spring comes 'round again; and we yet have next fall  and winter yet to live through. Thank goodness, the CDC seems to believe that those of us who had swine flu in 1957 are immune to this flu from now on. I do hope so, for except for Tamiflu, which seems to work if it is taken in the first 24 hours to lessen the symptoms, we aren't much beyond the sulfa drugs of 1957. 

At least, we have gone beyond the things which were used in 1918 when doctors were unable to find anything which really worked and people who lived away from city doctors made their own medications, coming up which such palliatives as a  liniment, warmed and applied to the chest, made of hog lard, kerosene, and camphor or a cough syrup made from boiled cherry tree bark, sweetened with sugar and whisky. Nope, not interested in ever having swine flu again.