Tuesday 30 June 2009

Swine Flu? Phooey!

On Sunday evening Paul started to shiver, now to put this into context it was in excess of 32 degrees that day so by no means cold. Now he did not just shiver, he dithered, shaking the whole bed as his teeth chattered.

I was stripped off trying to catch a breath of air from the breeze free open window and he was under a sheet, and a duvet. I got a second duvet and still he shivered, so I then wrapped the other half of our duvet over the top of him (we are now up to 1 sheet and 3 duvets!).

Still he shivered!

I forced a good old Beechams Powder down him and made sure he had plenty of water. By 3am he was too hot! Time for another Beechams I thought.

Then the coughing and sneezing started.

On Monday night, whilst waiting to go into our Pilates session, I was chatting with Sally-Ann and Avril about it. Avril got very concerned. Being a practice Nurse she pointed out that flu season was over and that this was very unusual. She then suggested I call NHS Direct to seek advise.

Well.... when I got home from class, Paul was on the phone with a friend gassing away like an old fishwife, coughing and sneezing, but otherwise a typical bloke.

I told him what Avril has suggested and we went onto the NHS swine flu website. We followed the symptom checker for further advise. We answered No to the first 2 questions and Yes to the last one. The next page told us CALL 999 EMERGENCY!

Stupid blooming website - good job we have a small modicum of brain between us or else we would have wasted vital resources needed for the really sick.

And the moral of the story - Ignore stupid government websites and just use common sense, you will have a much better outcome.

By the way it's now Tuesday and Paul seems OK!

Many thanks to Avril though, at least I was on the alert for anything untoward should it occur.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The problem is you cant be to certain with all the different strains of virus's going round..Glad you had it under control nurse Jo!

MYCLOSETGARDEN said...

Yeah the swine flu has been thrown out of proportion - I am glad he is feeling better.

mypilatescornwall said...

what makes me smile is that you came to Pilates leaving him shivering at home..hilarious...you have your priorities right my girl!