Swine Flu Symptoms

Having read and watched documentaries about past influensa pandemics, I thought in this day and age, things might be better, that we may never have to go through one.

It appears my hopes have not materialised and another influensa pandemic is upon us.

Found out a couple of years ago I have a form of Leukemia, CML. I take a drug called Glivec, and currently doing fine, three years after my diagnosis,

It is very possible, that I would have been dead by now, if I had been diagnosed 20 years ago.

Medical advances; fantastic, I am thankful for Glivec, it has literally, saved my life.

A couple of days ago my wife said  “Joseph, I am scared about this Swine Flu and we should get the inoculation”, I am rated, as being in a high risk group due to my illness.

So, this Wednesday we went to our local medical centre, in our closest town and found a queue of about a two hundred people.

We took our place, me, my wife our three year old daughter and one year old son. It was quarter to three in the afternoon and the information we had was that the inoculations would start at three. It was cold, dismal and we stood queued trying to keep the kids from being bored.

Soon, we saw the queue grow behind us, longer and longer. I thought, this is here in Sweden and precautionary, what if was a real, immediate danger, rather than cautionary. There was a feeling in my heart, that I did not want to ever be in a cue like this with my kids, for anything more imminent…..existential angst set in.

Having worked with people from the Middle East, who have suffered great hardships, and had to cope with traumas, I would find unimaginable. Here, my family and I were faced with a discomfort, verging on the irritating, and looking at my children wishing they were not having to go through this experience.

We pampered Europeans are so fortunate, after two and half hours of queuing in the rain (how ironic is that, waiting for hours, in the rain. on a cold, windy, autumn day in Sweden, for a flu jab…bet more people ended up with a runny nose…) we finally went into a room and three out of four of our family were injected with an inoculation against Swine Flu. Our one year old son was deemed to be too young…