I always look forward to my journey back home as it usually brings me thoughts about good food, relaxed life and of course family! This time however, I started from Vernon Hills less enthusiastically, with a fear of Swine flu - the disease with symptoms as common as the common flu yet deadly enough to cause death (or so the media would have us believe).
I tried buying a mask to wear on my journey back home but could not get one so stuffed myself with several paper tissues (its a different thing that I never got to use them as much). Two long flights and 24 hours later, I reached home dead tired due to lack of sleep and harassed by the airline over missing baggage. I was checked at the airport for fever and was let go as I did not have any temperature. But after a day, I had mild fever which came and went a couple of times. According to the pamphlets given to me on swine flu, I could develop symptoms within 7 days of arrival, so I decided to do a medical checkup. I called up the Center of Communicable Diseases Hospital to check on where the test needed to be done. The lady attendant answering the phone just asked me when and where I had returned from, what symptoms I had and immediately thought that I had swine flu. She said that I would have to get myself tested at King Institute in Guindy and get admitted in a special ward in the General Hospital. What?! I was not even tested yet and I was already a patient?
I grudgingly started for King Institute mentally picturizing myself in the GH ward along with other patients. On my way, I received a call from my office stating that they had a tie-up with Ranbaxy labs where I could do the test. I felt much better and headed there. My medical test was done and the doctor did a general medical check and advised me not to get carried away with the media hype on swine flu. He said that in most cases with good precautions and nutrition, the patients recovered fairly quickly. By evening, the results of my blood test were out and I was greatly relieved to find out that everything was normal and said out aloud “Poda panni! Jaare Suvvar!” (Tamil & Urdu phrases meaning “Get lost pig!”).
