A columnist’s experience with swine flu

My name is Kia Makarechi, and I have H1N1. This is my story.

But in reality, that’s all too dramatic. My experiences, faithfully recreated below, demonstrate that swine flu does not always live up to its media-furnished reputation of germ-slinging destroyer of all things.

About a week ago, I came home from a full day of class and a few meetings to find myself feeling extremely ““ almost impossibly ““ tired. Then I began to feel painfully cold. Then the nagging back pains, which I thought were a result of carrying around “The Riverside Shakespeare,” stopped playing games, uniting to form an almost paralytic soreness that covered much of the area from my shoulder blades to the backs of my kidneys.

Within a few hours, I was shivering in my bed. My roommate thought I was faking, but thankfully he let me sleep at whatever awfully early hour it was. I woke up around 3:30 in the morning to use the restroom.

As soon as my foot hit the cool tile of our mid-1970s restroom, the shakes hit with a vengeance I hope to never feel again.

I returned to my bed and curled into the tightest-bound ball I could manage, trembling like the ground at Pompeii. But the warmth never came.

The next day, I gathered enough energy to make the walk to the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center. I was told to return five hours later.

“Five hours later?” my incredulous roommate said. “Did you tell them you had swine flu?”

(This would mark the first of countless, amazing responses that my friends and colleagues exhibited toward my developing illness. Any publishers reading this: I will give you the complete list in return for a book deal that rivals Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue.”)

I came back at the requested time and answered the usual medical questions. Things got interesting when a nurse who returned to check my peak airflow did so wearing a mask. They let me go but with stern warnings to stay home and rest.

After being told at the Ashe Center that I did, in fact, have the H1N1 virus, I felt excitingly dangerous. It was as if my illness had been legitimized. Armed with doctor’s notes and a prescription, I was now a part of pathogen history.

I resolved to take this seriously. I cancelled my months-planned trip to San Francisco. I was supposed to write the counterpoint Viewpoint column to Alex Pherson’s stance on Iran this week, but alas, the swine. I called for replacements at some important meetings I was to attend. I purchased Extra Strength Tylenol (with sweet sugar coating), picked up a new asthma inhaler (to make sure I felt as feeble as possible) and settled at home for what I imagined to be two weeks of uncomfortable sleep punctuated by alarms telling me it was time for more medication.

Then I woke up the next day and felt fine.

The fever was negligible. The shortness of breath was gone.

We have all heard the horror stories. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta caught H1N1 in Afghanistan, and it crippled him to the point where he was incapable of walking a few steps before passing out. A Westwood LSAT instructor contracted the virus in Hawaii, where he was for his wedding.

People die, for God’s sake, because of this combo avian-swine flu.

My friends certainly treated me as if I were the virus incarnate: One roommate brought home masks from his work, another instantly fashioned a sign emblazoned with the words “No Kia Zone” and a crossed-out pig. My boss demanded I stay home for as long as possible, and proceeded, I’m told, to wipe down anywhere I may have gone in the office with antibacterial wipes. After I ambiguously updated my Facebook status to “H1N1 whatup,” comments began streaming in. Someone even asked me to infect his friend so that he could receive “certain privileges and allowances from the state.” (I did not.)

But here I am, writing a column and lamenting that it would be socially irresponsibly for me to attend a friend’s 21st birthday party.

Clearly, one man’s swine flu is another man’s biannual 24-hour flu.

This discrepancy, between news-report-generated hysteria and real-life experience, answers some of the many questions that flooded my mind after my doctor told me that the virus was definitely here at UCLA: Why aren’t students aware of this? Why haven’t I been quarantined?

In the words of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the “2009 H1N1 virus has ranged from mild to severe.” Those with complicating factors such as asthma should immediately seek treatment. (About 70 percent of those hospitalized with H1N1 have at least one “high risk” factor that is known to drive the flu crazy.)

At the least, don’t go to your 250-person lecture if you think you might have the flu.

The CDC also says, however, that “seasonal (the flu you’ve had for years) influenza can cause mild to severe illness.” In fact, about 36,000 people in the United States die from flu-related complications each year, and more than 200,000 are hospitalized each year.

So it can also be far less traumatic than that terrible flu you had last year. Like most things in this world, the virus’s effects are influenced by a seemingly limitless number of factors.

Judging by the almost irrational reactions of some of my friends, it makes sense for the university to not report statistics on the virus. That is, if they even have them ““ I was not tested to verify that I had the illness. Like most colds and flus, mine was empirically diagnosed.

These statistics would inherently oversimplify; my experience would be counted alongside those of someone who was forced to miss two weeks of class and work.

If there is anything to be learned from my anticlimactic brush with the virus, it is that early action is best. As soon as you notice a fever, hit the Tylenol (barring any relevant allergies), hit the bed and hit the water or tea or new-wave vitamin liquid.

My advice? Get more sleep and avoid the fraternity beer-pong match.

Want to talk to a victim?

E-mail Makarechi at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].