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Since early 2000 America has been hiding behind masks in an effort to stop the spread of the latest epidemic.
From 2002’s SARS in South China, the 1997 Avian flu strain in Hong Kong and now 2009’s Swine Flu pandemic in Boulder, these epidemics have had society running scared.
My brief but memorable experience with a faulty swine flu diagnosis has given me newfound empathy for the people behind the surgical mask.
It all started with word-of-mouth, shared cups and my roommate (Haley) and mine’s shared hypochondria. Before I knew it, I had come home from class with nausea and Haley and I had packed up my laptop (yes, I fully planned on editing if admitted with H1N1) and headed to the Boulder Community ER.
After a brief questionnaire the unsympathetic nurse gave us surgical masks, hand sanitizer, prescriptions for Vicodin and anti-nausea pills and sent us on our way. We were instructed to wear our masks in all outdoor locations, and warned to self-quarantine until 24 hours after our fever broke.
Despite taking the rancid anti-nausea pill, my stomach remained unsettled on the car ride to Walgreens to fill Haley’s prescription and stock up on Gatorade. While she was inside picking things up, I sat on the curb outside in my surgical mask feeling more scrutinized than I ever had in my life. Before I knew which end was up, I yanked off my mask and threw up, right there, in front of Walgreen’s.
Traffic stopped, people stared. The person on the corner looked scared. A kind woman in a CU shirt kept her distance, but explained she wanted to help me. “Do you need water? Gatorade? The ER?”
After our conversation, I wandered over to the nearby bench to call my mother and tear up, because that’s what you do when you think you have been victimized by an epidemic, and just hurled in a public location (after removing a yellow surgical mask).
Next door to my secluded bench was a liquor store; and the owner was outside while I cried and panicked to my mother. When I hung up the phone, the kind man put out his cigarette and reassured me that “Girl, you don’t look stupid in that mask. You just need to draw a little smiley face on it- did you get tested for the swine flu?”
“No, it’s an epidemic, and as I am a member of the hearty 20-something demographic, they won’t be wasting their resources on me.”
“Be careful, did you go to Boulder Community? I know a woman who they loaded with morphine until her heart blew up. They don’t know shit.”
As our conversation ended and I got up to leave he told me to come back when I’m not contagious and “I’ll get you a bottle of Jack, make you feel like new again.”
It turns out the liquor store man was right, when I went to Wardenburg Health Center to get my prescriptions filled I stopped by the clinic counter to tell them my notoriously weak stomach bucked the system and threw up after anti-nausea meds. The nurse got me in within 10 minutes, but not after some minor confusion with a second masked “Sara R. K.” Some masked gentlemen complimented on the feminine yellow shade of my surgical mask- I explained to them that this was of the Boulder Community ER variety, rather than Wardenburg’s ridiculously unoriginal shade of baby blue.
It was from the nurse that I learned the good news: nausea and vomiting are not side effects of the swine flu. And considering that I started feeling uneasy four days prior to my vomiting rally, I should have experienced a raging fever of 104 by now. Feeling liberated, I removed my mask and went home.
Now as I write this column from my couch on day two of the flu, I feel like I have any other time I’ve been sick. I am surrounded by tissues and am double-fisting Gatorade and Vitamin Water as “10 Things I Hate about You” plays in the background. My liberal measures for eradicating a simple flu with the medicinal artillery designed for fighting off a pandemic have made this potentially the easiest (albeit most loopy) sick day I’ve had yet.
From this experience I have learned many things: Pandemics create paranoid people, WebMD your symptoms before wasting time and money on an ineffective ER visit, puking in public must be avoided at all costs and don’t share cups with frat boys, because you won’t get sick in the first place.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sara Kassabian at Sara.kassabian@colorado.edu.
1 comment
Glad you are ok, Sara. One of the former Independent photo editors was a bit concerned that she, too, had been exposed. Nice to know it is regular flu. Get well soon.