Up Close and Personal with H1N1

There’s been a lot of hype over the Swine Flu lately (also known as H1N1) and I knew I would eventually get the vaccination.

How bizarre it was just a few weeks ago when the majority of the news outlets would interview Joe Schmo and Plain Jane on the street that almost everyone intereviewed said they were not going to get vaccinated.

Fast forward four or five days later when the flu clinics opened their doors and droves of people were lining up in the middle of the night to get their H1N1 flu shot in Toronto.

The first thing I thought of is what did I miss? Was there some apocalyptic event that happened while I was sleeping?

After hearing of a local 13 year old boy who died within 48 hours of contracting the virus, I still didn’t become hysterical with the masses.  I’m in the burbs so decided to wait until Peel Region opened their doors. There’s a clinic quite close to me so when they opened at 9:30 a.m. that Monday morning a few weeks ago, I casually drove up around 9:15 a.m. and within a few seconds, just drove off as I saw people going hog wild in line.

I’m not panicking … I thought I would try again later that day around 4:30 p.m. when I thought most parents are now home with their kids and any babies would be napping.

Great … I get there the same day and the line up has definitely shrunk. When I get to the end of the line, a police officer sends me back packing as I had missed the cut-off by 1 or 2 people.

Peel Region finally gets their act together and puts up the wait times on their web site so I decide to watch that instead of wasting time and gas on trying to get to the clinic.

I finally get to a clinic last Thursday and was in and out within an hour.

My neighbour and her husband that went to the International Centre a few hours earlier called and said there were no line ups there. They were leaving for Florida for 6 months the next day, so there was some urgency for them to get their flu shot. I never did find out if she also got sick …

When I get home, I call her to let her know that I got vaccinated. She wasn’t feeling well and said she was going to call it a night and go to bed early.

A few hours later, I’m not feeling well either. Again, I didn’t want to be hysterical and think that I was having a reaction to the vaccine. By Satuday, almost 48 hours after getting the vaccine, I’m really sick.

I’m trying everything in my medicine cupboard to help with the various symptoms: the worst of them being a really dry cough and a chest that felt like it was on fire. Nothing is relieving any of the symptoms.

By Monday, I’m still quite sick and decide to call Telehealth Ontario to speak with a nurse (free access to a registered nurse 24 hours a day!). She tells me to get to a doctor within 3 or 4 hours as it’s likely the Swine Flu. I knew the vaccine would take approximately 2 weeks to become effective so my guess is that someone at the flu clinic already had symptoms and was infecting everyone … how nice of them!

I call my doctor and decide that it’s probably not a good idea to go into a waiting room full of  people and children with every orifice of my body leaking some kind of fluid … and although some jerk did that to me and others at the flu clinic, I was not going to reciprocate and do unto others …

I’m not a religious person, but I can’t help but think that I must have done some really bad things in a previous life and really hope that this life I’m living on earth today will redeem my soul for future lives.

How much more am I expected to endure …

Honestly, I really think my immune system has left for a vacation, and forgot to take me with it. I also would have liked someone to spread some fairy dust on me so I could nap from age 45 to 55, but that’s another rant for another time … I suspect most women will understand that sentiment whether they have cancer or not.

Within 24 hours of being discharged from having a radical mastectomy, I got a really bad cold that lasted almost until a few days ago — close to 2 weeks.

There were times I thought the hospital intentionally gave me the cold so I could continually cough as they asked us to in the pre-surgery video.

The drugs prescribed also gave me unsettling symptoms:

• The percocet for pain made me both itchy and nauseous — some of the itchiness may have also been from the morphine drip in the hospital — I’m sure there was residue of it pumping through my veins for a few days after being discharged.
• The antibiotics I had to take 4 times a day caused extremely loose stool and very frequent bowel movements.To say the least, I didn’t need the stool softener prescribed.  This problem is quite normal with antibiotics and I lived 50 years thinking I was allergic to them. It wasn’t until Dr. Ciara explained that antibiotics kill good bacteria, along with the bad … it was a moment of clarity that I can’t believe I didn’t have before.

Thank goodness I still had some cough syrup with codeine in it for the bad cold I had in October, and also had Symbicort for the wheezing this cold caused.

In the early hours this morning, I was shivering … and shivering … and shivering.

Oh no, I now may have the Flu! What next? Locusts?

I didn’t get a Flu shot this year because of all this other stuff going on.

Man, do I need some time off after this is all over … just to recover again!

Update: March 1, 2009.

Since going to the doctor on Thursday afternoon, it’s likely I had flu-like symptoms due to the leaking incision — see post entitled White Women Wear Weaves for information on what’s going on with my wound. I’m back on antibiotics and no longer feel like I’m coming down with the Flu.