Morning:
8°c
We doctors like to think we are pretty invincible. After all, don't we battle daily with sickness and disease, exposing ourselves to infection unflinchingly?
Don't we keep calm in the face of disaster and Mr Henderson's ulcers and Mrs Gupta's complaints of being “tired all the time”? Well, yes, sort of, but you should see us when we get ill ourselves. All that apparent rationality disintegrates and we really do make the worst kind of illogically paranoid patients.
I'm living proof. I got appendicitis a year or so ago. Any patient of mine showing similar signs would be through the doors of an A&E department before you could say laparoscopic appendicectomy. But I was busy, scared of an operation and I hoped (in true male fashion) that if I ignored it, it would go away.
It didn't, I ended up in hospital for a week with peritonitis and now have a large scar to remind me of my foolishness. And last week I found myself in a similar situation.
I've had four patients with swine flu, confirmed with swabs and duly sent home with Tamiflu and strict instructions not to leave the house until they were better, or dead. And then I started to feel rather rough. I woke one morning with a sore throat and foggy head. I didn't have a temperature but felt generally achy and under the weather. I was due in clinic that day. What to do?
My medical training should have told me that as I'm a young fit male, if it was swine flu, it shouldn't be a problem. The disease is mild and short-lived, and I wouldn't be worrying if I had a cold or seasonal flu. So why couldn't I make a sensible decision this time?
It seems all of us can't help but be influenced by the scare stories in the media. Well, as I didn't have a temperature, then according to the guidelines swine flu was unlikely, but my medical intuition said that my four patients had exposed me to the virus and that we all react differently to infections — perhaps the fever would come later.
Should I stay at home and dump my poor colleagues in it, or was I simply falling prey to the mass hysteria and this was just a head cold?
Despite being inundated with information about swine flu, I was beginning to realise that it wasn't as straightforward as the official advice had led me to believe. And if I couldn't work it out, then how was the public supposed to? No wonder there is a general sense of confusion and panic.
I went to work but called it quits mid-afternoon. I felt bad, but not really bad. Should I start the Tamiflu and quarantine myself to avoid infecting others or should I take paracetamol and bravely soldier on? Could I bear the shame of being a low-risk, fit young person who, in a fit of paranoia, gobbles down precious stocks of Tamiflu, thereby helping to develop a resistant strain, which will eventually create a truly decimating super-flu?
It seems all of us can't help but be influenced by the scare stories in the media.
By day four, I felt well enough to return to work. My dithering was partly due to being unable to look at my own illness in an impartial, medical way, and partly due to conflicting information, coupled with contagious hysteria.
In retrospect I can now see that the answers are in fact very simple. There are plenty of bugs around now causing similar symptoms to swine flu, including a summer cold virus. In all cases the advice is the same: stay at home, drink fluids and don't go into work until you feel the storm has passed. Far too many people think it's valiant to struggle into work when ill. It's not — others catch your bugs, you prolong your own illness and, let's face it, you're not going to be productive anyway.
We need to get over this very Londoncentric guilt trip about taking (genuine) sick days. If you have flu, be it swine, bird, Asian or man, then stay in bed and watch Cash in the Attic.
Nicolas Sarkozy needs to get the balance right
It seems Carla's gruelling fitness regime was too much for French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He collapsed while jogging, reportedly from a “vaso-vagal episode”, which caused a drop in blood pressure and heart rate.
Trying to keep up with a woman 13 years his junior, on a hot day while on a restrictive diet … I thought it was only mad dogs and Englishmen who went out in the midday sun. Well, he's definitely not English, so …
Actually, for a man in his fifties who has been treated for angina in the past it's a good thing Sarkozy takes his fitness seriously. But if you are exercising at the level Sarkozy seems to be, with a heavy workload, adequate nutrition is vital for his exercising to have any effect at all.
If he wants to maintain his carefully crafted image of a youthful, workaholic president and a super-fit, testosterone-fuelled runner and cyclist, he has to show he knows how to get the balance right.
Reader views (2)
I was travelling when I began to feel 'odd', really having to focus on what I was doing - but the front pages were full of swine flu at the time (10 days ago) and I thought I could be imagining it. When I realised it was real I had to make a lot of decisions (c.f.Dr Jessen) which I found incredibly difficult. Was I ill or wasn't I? In the end I had to cancel my plans to meet my grandchildren for a holiday and return home with a suitcase full of clean clothes. But I felt too ill to realise what I had missed.
My GP prescribed Tamiflu, the side effects were as bad as the disease, and I reckon it has taken me one week being ill and one week to get over. I am still really low on energy. But the worst thing and BEWARE is telling other people. Mostly they do not understand (any more than the professionals) and you may be treated like a pariah. Roll on the autumn wave.
I notice a lot of the smug comments in the press are from people who haven't caught it yet. Incidentally I have no idea where it came from and know no one else with it, and I wash my hands all the time!
- Jane, London, 31/07/2009 21:45
Report abuse
From what you said, it seems sensible that GPs should still be swabbing to be certain. Mine said I 'couldn't possibly' have it because I was not the exact 38.5 protocol temp (she said, jabbing at a piece of paper). I had went in as I am asthmatic and wanted to err on the side of caution (as I have a tendency towards bronchitis from flu). She told me to go home and take paracetamol. I ended up in bed the next 6 days, mild fever, the most painful sore throat ever, mild diarrhea, incredibly stuffed sinuses, and a fatigue I had never experience before (physically could not get out of bed for 3 days except bathroom). It went to my chest on the 6th day, and stayed for the next 6 days. I dreaded going to the GP again after the way she made me feel for going in the first place, so stuck it out. Thankfully it slowly went away, but surely this was no 'summer cold' (which I have never been prone to - when I get sick it has been without fail in winter). So swine flu or not? I would say, after all that and how I was during that time, that it was indeed. In most aspects, it was like what I get in the winter, but took longer to leave, and the diarrhea/fatigue/and unusually long period of chest infection points to something other than normal flu.
- 888, Kent, 31/07/2009 15:08
Report abuse
