It's just flu.

I knew this would happen....

I knew when I heard it on the radio on Monday afternoon.

I knew it when I saw it on the street poles on Tuesday...

It was confirmed on Wednesday when the queue started outside Med Reg*

Pandemonium has erupted in the Cape as a result of that one unfortunate Stellenboshie. Suddenly Flu is not just flu...suddenly it is akin to having Ebola, or meningitis. Consequently, not only did we not get our raise, but now we are working twice as hard because some chop (who has a 9-5 journalist job) put it on the front page of the newspaper that if you have a common cold you are going to die.

And the people started coming...because lets face it; it's winter in Cape Town.

I know we all get it, some of us twice a year, so it's perfectly normal that one would want to panic. It does feel a bit unavoidable doesn't it?

Come now...it's just flu! I know you pretend like this never happens ever, but believe it not, last year before Swine flu arrived people died of flu...and the year before that and the year before that.

Whether you get the H1N1 variant or the H1N2, or A2E3 varient, it still feels the same.

Your body hurts, your nose is runny, your throat is sore, you get a temperature, you get a headache, you cough and splutter and just feel crap.

Lets just fastforward through a lot of explaining and take you from first year medical school to final exam in two sentences.

Influenza's aetiology is a VIRUS...there is no cure. The treatment is supportive....

That means if you feel so sick that you come and see a doctor, a fairly decent one will listen to your symptoms, take your temperature, listen to your lungs and make sure that you are not turning blue, stick an ice-cream stick with no ice-cream on it down your throat and poke around in your ears. Then he will tell you you probably have flu and that you should be at home, in bed, with orange juice and hot chocolate. To make you feel like you didn't waste your time he will give you some fancy panado/myprodol and a sweety for your throat and a sick note probably.

If you happen to be turning blue, or your heart is running a marathon he will put you in a hospital and do a few more tests, just to confirm that you are not fighting off a really dangerous bug that he can actually do something about with antibiotics, and maybe give you some expensive oxygen and a pretty little drip.

Because you belong do Discovery, he will send away some of your 'mucous' and do an influenza/H1N1 PCR. This costs about R750 (about the same amount as 2 months of ARV's) and because it's quite a complicated biochemical process will take at the very least 3 days to get a result back (by which stage you'll be feeling semi-human or you'll be dead).

Ag...I suppose the people that I really want to be telling this to are the 15 people still sitting on the benches at med reg. The one's whose kiddies are running around and tearing the place down but who happen to have a bit of a runny nose.

Number 1. Someone will probably only see you at 3am tomorrow morning.

Number 2. If your kid really has swine flu...he's not going to die from it.

It's just flu.

*Med Reg is basically the 24 hour medical 'emergency' service that operates at Red Cross Childrens Hospital...yes, because a runny nose is a 'medical emergency'.