Oink Oink

WAAAAAYYYYYYYY back when, when the world was clutched in the throws of terror about H1N1, I snorted and chuckled a little to myself at the ensuing panic, and then promptly went out and bought enough food to feed an army just in case there was a quarantine. Hey, no point in not being prepared, right???

Then, as we all know, it all fizzled out to nothing.

I patted myself on the back, and then got out of the food storage closet.

Every once in a while, the news brings up H1N1 (sort of like how mean parents scare their children with scary puppets...I don't know any parents like that, but I imagine they exist) and my eyes glaze over and I move on to the next interesting story (although, not much has been talked about except Michael Jackson, and, honestly, I couldn't care less. Dude people, he was just a man...sorta...).

Well, almost two weeks ago, Joshua started to lose his appetite. I figured he just got out of his growth spurt, and took it in stride. Then he started to be really, really tired, and then came the snotty nose, sneezing, and the cough. I thought to myself, "Hmmm...must be summer allergies." Well, as far as I know, allergies aren't contagious, so it must be something else because I got it. It whacked me so hard, I couldn't get out of bed for almost two days. Symptoms included headache, sore throat, cough, nasal congestion, exhaustion, sneezing and crabbiness. Joshua fared better, but that's probably because the hardest thing he has to do in a day is put on clean underwear. So, my brain started to churn...slowly, albeit. Bogged down with slime, you know.

"Maybe I should look up H1N1 symptoms..."

So, here you go, folks. You can decide for yourself if my family is contaminated (don't worry, we are on the up, and Eva only has a runny nose, and Jeremy just has had a slight headache.) This is taken from this website: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Pandemic-flu/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

The typical symptoms are:

sudden fever

sudden cough. *check*

Other symptoms may include:

headache, *check*

tiredness, *check*

chills,

aching muscles,

limb or joint pain,

diarrhoea or stomach upset, *check*

sore throat, *check*

runny nose, *check*

sneezing, and *check*

loss of appetite. *check*

It probably spread in my family since none of us have any compunction using each other's forks or cups, or, since our apartment is so small, sneezing and coughing on each other. Yummm... So, H1N1 or really nasty cold...you decide.