I’ve been a bit sickly in recent days. This is why I haven’t blogged for a while. That and I didn’t really have anything to say. This was a more or less direct consequence of being ill. It’s not very interesting to blog about having watched over an entire season of House in a week (although I have – boom ra. Anyone want to ask what diseases can be diagnosed with a lumbar puncture I am your gal).
Daring to be different I didn’t actually have swine flu, which, as I’m sure everyone knows, was declared a pandemic by WHO a few months ago. Of course as the UK is currently diagnosing people over the phone, using non-doctors and then throwing TamiFlu at anyone with a temperature I’m not sure I trust the current statistics of how many people have been affected thus far. Several people have been found to have been misdiagnosed. Sadly only when they got worse or died. A 48 year old woman died of meningitis after being diagnosed with swine flu, and a 13 year old boy had to spend six days in hospital after being diagnosed with H1N1 when he in fact had a kidney infection.
As for myself, C (I couldn’t talk at this stage) had to assure the receptionist at the health centre that I didn’t have a temperature or any flu like symptoms before I could get an appointment to see a doctor. The doctor rather unhelpfully said that it was “…probably a chest infection caused by a virus in which case you’ll have to fight it off yourself, but just in case it’s a bacterial infection here have these anti-biotics”. I’ve seen way too many House episodes to not realise that just means ‘I have no idea just eat these and see if it works’. I was all for not eating them but C persuaded me.
I’m much better now. But I think that’s mainly because of the bucketfuls of squash I consumed.
Incidentally there’s also government advice set up on swine flu at directgov including links to the NHS ‘Online symptom and treatment assessment tool’.
I had a go on this tool and it told me to CALL 999 IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!!!! Okay it didn’t have so many exclamation points but it definitely sounded like it was trying to convey a great deal of panic. Needless to say I didn’t call 999. I wasn’t even messing around – I just answered the questions seriously. I don’t think it’s a very useful tool, amblances take forever anyway (more on this later) without fools wasting their time because the online NHS tool led them astray. The whole flu panic is out of hand – people need to take deep breaths and calm down.
The furrows nest 