Sean Kershaw's Weblog
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February 25, 2008
Not Ready
I'm a horrible sick person. I cycle back and forth between being a big-whiny-baby and a caged animal when I'm home sick -- which luckily doesn't happen to often. (Sorry for my family who has to deal with me. Neither end of the spectrum is any fun.)
For the past seven days (ending yesterday) I've had the flu, and it's been a good learning opportunity. And it might not be fair, or appropriate, but I can't help but run through some disaster-planning scenarios.
First of all, the symptoms began after hanging out with a friend who had just returned from two weeks in South Asia (Vietnam, Hong Kong, etc) -- which has it's own disaster-movie potential. But given the incubation period I'm sure I got this days before we talked. Anyway, hopefully, I didn't share it with anyone before it really hit me.
When it did, I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. I went to the clinic, assuming I had strep throat. The strep tests were negative, but the doctor just told me to drink lots of liquids, etc and go home. Never mentioned that it was almost certainly the flu. Never mentioned what I needed to do to NOT be a walking virus-machine. Never said kiss-the-next-five-days-goodbye. Never said I was contageous as long as I was coughing. What if this was the tip of a real outbreak?
Not ready personally. I was not ready to be incapacitated for this long. Didn't have the right symptom-meds. Most of the family was also sick or just getting better. Didn't think ahead just to cancel things for several days. Didn't know that it never really "breaks" -- it just slooooowly goes away. (Seven days of having a fever.)
Not ready publicly. Perhaps it's the paranoid in me, but it didn't leave me confident in our front-line staff's readiness to fight something like this on the micro-level. I know I'm not being fair, but I think this is one of those times when public health paranoia is ok -- whether its a relatively minor outbreak like we have now, or a bigger more deadly outbreak.
Glad to be back at work, even if I'm running pretty slowly.
Posted by Sean Kershaw at February 25, 2008 4:54 PM
Comments
You mean our front-line health care staff, right? Not the CL's front-line staff (hey, I think we did a pretty good job in your absence!).
Posted by: Victoria | February 28, 2008 2:58 PM
No -- NOT CL front-line staff. You all did a GREAT job in my absence. Thanks.
:)
Posted by: Sean | March 10, 2008 8:16 AM