My horrific close shave with the H1N1 virus
PHIN WONG, plus editor | phin@mediacorp.com.sg
I ALWAYS imagined quarantine to be like that movie Outbreak. You know, lying forlornly on a creaky, metal-framed bed in a criminally under-decorated medical facility, with Dustin Hoffman waddling about in a yellow protective suit, mumbling something about a monkey in Zaire.
“You’re really sick,” he’d say through his plexiglass shield. “We need to find the monkey.”
“Oh, no you don’t, you dirty old man,” I’d reply, pulling the gap in the back of my hospital gown shut. “This is no time to play find the monkey. You’re the one who’s sick, Hoffman. Sick!”
Returning from a trip to Italy two weeks ago, I was kindly informed that it was not a good idea to come into the office.
It was company policy at the time — anyone returning from an H1N1-infected country had to stay away from work for a week, just in case. Quarantined. As luck would have it, some dude in the middle of Tuscany caught the bug just as I got there. Whee.
At first I didn’t think anything about it. It was a mathematical improbability that I would even cross paths with the poor guy in a region of 3.5 million people spread out over 23 kilometres.
Still, the voice of paranoia lingered in my head like a long-departed house guest with wet socks. To be more specific, it was the sound of my mother on the phone.
“It’s a pandemic, Son,” She’d say in her expensive thrice-daily international phone calls. “It’s everywhere. Forget Michelangelo and Raphael. Better stay in your room and watch CNN.”
If she had been talking about stiffing two of the more popular Ninja Turtles in the name of rabid safety, I might have considered it. (Oh, who am I kidding? Miss a date with heroes in a half-shell? Turtle power!)
But I had not endured a 14-hour flight — stuffed into an economy seat next to a large apish man with the inexplicable need to read his newspaper with arms stretched out to a pterodactyl’s wingspan — simply to stay in my fleabag hotel.
It was not, I decided, logical to hide from the virus-riddled body of one and miss out on the 15kg of gelato I had planned on getting fat on. Laughing in the face of mortal danger, I roamed the cobblestone streets of Florence and lounged at quaint cafes armed with no other protection than a smile and a bottle of prosecco (alcohol kills germs, you see).
But it was too late — Mother had planted the seed of paranoia in my head. That and she was SMS-ing me every 30 minutes.
“Be careful. Swine flu is spreading. More people dying in Mexico. Better buy a mask before it’s too late,” she’d text, ominously. “How’s the tiramisu?”
The next morning, convinced every passer-by on the street with the slightest cough was a heinous harbinger of death, I stayed in bed watching CNN with the blankets pulled over my head like some kind of woolly force field. The symptoms of a person infected with the H1N1 virus flashed repeatedly on the screen: Fever and chills, coughing, sore throat, and fatigue. Headaches and vomiting were not uncommon.
I had all of the above. It was a miracle I was even alive at all. My head hurt, I felt a little ill, my throat was all dry and scratchy, my body was aching, and I was tired. So tired.
This must be how it feels like to head towards the light, I thought to myself, looking around the room to see a dazzling celestial beam of love.
All I found was an old table lamp.
That’s when I realised I was going to live. I didn’t have swine flu — I had wine flu. This was how I felt every morning since I figured out how to work a corkscrew. I didn’t have H1N1 unless the letters stood for “Hungover” and “Nausea”.
I turned off the TV and went back to sleep, assured in the knowledge that the cure for my particular strain of wine flu was aplenty in that glorious city — more wine.
“Sorry, you’ll have to be quarantined at home for a week,” apologised the company upon my return, this time cramped next to an inebriated Roberto Cavalli doppelganger. “Don’t come to work.”
The wretched quarantine was upon me. Fortunately, real life is never what it looks like in the movies. There were no yellow protective suits. No Dustin Hoffman. No monkey. Only the musical sound all us poor quarantined folk are subjected to:
“Are ya ready, kids?”
“Aye-aye, Captain!”
“Whooo lives in a pineapple under the sea?”
“SpongeBob Squarepants!”
Double episodes of SpongeBob on Nickelodeon. All week long. I turned up the volume and settled back into my couch.
A week basking under the Tuscan sun and now forced to spend another seven days away from the fluorescent cell that is the office? Oh, it was just too cruel. Utterly inhumane. Torture.
But, alas, there was nothing I could do but follow instructions. Oh, the horror.
From TODAYOnline.com, Plus – Friday, 22-May-2009; see the source article here.
----------
How about some supplements for a holistic well-being?
PHIN WONG, plus editor | phin@mediacorp.com.sg
I ALWAYS imagined quarantine to be like that movie Outbreak. You know, lying forlornly on a creaky, metal-framed bed in a criminally under-decorated medical facility, with Dustin Hoffman waddling about in a yellow protective suit, mumbling something about a monkey in Zaire.“You’re really sick,” he’d say through his plexiglass shield. “We need to find the monkey.”
“Oh, no you don’t, you dirty old man,” I’d reply, pulling the gap in the back of my hospital gown shut. “This is no time to play find the monkey. You’re the one who’s sick, Hoffman. Sick!”
Returning from a trip to Italy two weeks ago, I was kindly informed that it was not a good idea to come into the office.
It was company policy at the time — anyone returning from an H1N1-infected country had to stay away from work for a week, just in case. Quarantined. As luck would have it, some dude in the middle of Tuscany caught the bug just as I got there. Whee.
At first I didn’t think anything about it. It was a mathematical improbability that I would even cross paths with the poor guy in a region of 3.5 million people spread out over 23 kilometres.
Still, the voice of paranoia lingered in my head like a long-departed house guest with wet socks. To be more specific, it was the sound of my mother on the phone.
“It’s a pandemic, Son,” She’d say in her expensive thrice-daily international phone calls. “It’s everywhere. Forget Michelangelo and Raphael. Better stay in your room and watch CNN.”
If she had been talking about stiffing two of the more popular Ninja Turtles in the name of rabid safety, I might have considered it. (Oh, who am I kidding? Miss a date with heroes in a half-shell? Turtle power!)
But I had not endured a 14-hour flight — stuffed into an economy seat next to a large apish man with the inexplicable need to read his newspaper with arms stretched out to a pterodactyl’s wingspan — simply to stay in my fleabag hotel.
It was not, I decided, logical to hide from the virus-riddled body of one and miss out on the 15kg of gelato I had planned on getting fat on. Laughing in the face of mortal danger, I roamed the cobblestone streets of Florence and lounged at quaint cafes armed with no other protection than a smile and a bottle of prosecco (alcohol kills germs, you see).
But it was too late — Mother had planted the seed of paranoia in my head. That and she was SMS-ing me every 30 minutes.
“Be careful. Swine flu is spreading. More people dying in Mexico. Better buy a mask before it’s too late,” she’d text, ominously. “How’s the tiramisu?”
The next morning, convinced every passer-by on the street with the slightest cough was a heinous harbinger of death, I stayed in bed watching CNN with the blankets pulled over my head like some kind of woolly force field. The symptoms of a person infected with the H1N1 virus flashed repeatedly on the screen: Fever and chills, coughing, sore throat, and fatigue. Headaches and vomiting were not uncommon.
I had all of the above. It was a miracle I was even alive at all. My head hurt, I felt a little ill, my throat was all dry and scratchy, my body was aching, and I was tired. So tired.
This must be how it feels like to head towards the light, I thought to myself, looking around the room to see a dazzling celestial beam of love.
All I found was an old table lamp.
That’s when I realised I was going to live. I didn’t have swine flu — I had wine flu. This was how I felt every morning since I figured out how to work a corkscrew. I didn’t have H1N1 unless the letters stood for “Hungover” and “Nausea”.
I turned off the TV and went back to sleep, assured in the knowledge that the cure for my particular strain of wine flu was aplenty in that glorious city — more wine.
“Sorry, you’ll have to be quarantined at home for a week,” apologised the company upon my return, this time cramped next to an inebriated Roberto Cavalli doppelganger. “Don’t come to work.”
The wretched quarantine was upon me. Fortunately, real life is never what it looks like in the movies. There were no yellow protective suits. No Dustin Hoffman. No monkey. Only the musical sound all us poor quarantined folk are subjected to:
“Are ya ready, kids?”
“Aye-aye, Captain!”
“Whooo lives in a pineapple under the sea?”
“SpongeBob Squarepants!”
Double episodes of SpongeBob on Nickelodeon. All week long. I turned up the volume and settled back into my couch.
A week basking under the Tuscan sun and now forced to spend another seven days away from the fluorescent cell that is the office? Oh, it was just too cruel. Utterly inhumane. Torture.
But, alas, there was nothing I could do but follow instructions. Oh, the horror.
From TODAYOnline.com, Plus – Friday, 22-May-2009; see the source article here.
----------
How about some supplements for a holistic well-being?
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