This past week has been quite interesting to say the least.  But for now I am only going to touch on Thursday past.

My question is this, Do hospitals really care about the H1N1 flu pandemic?

Let me explain my thoughts on this . . .

I woke up Thursday morning with my chest feeling heavy, almost like I had smoked 2 packs of cigarettes over night.  Within a few hours I felt extremely fatigued and by 5pm I headed to bed because I could not keep my eyes open any longer.  I woke up at 8:30pm feeling ten times worse than when I crawled into bed just a few hours before.  Now my hips, shoulders, upper arms and thighs were all aching, my chest felt like it was on fire, I could barely breathe and I felt very weak.  My hubby called me and I couldn't even bare to sit at my desk to talk to him my hips hurt so badly, he told me I should go to the hospital just in case it was H1N1, especially since I have three kids who we certainly do not want to see come down with something like that horrid flu.  I crawled into a little ball on the couch didn't move a thing as I drank my orange juice.  By 9pm I started getting the chills and decided it might be a good idea to take my temperature.  104.9F!  Well it was definitely time to head to the hospital.  But first I took 2 Tylenol and 10 minutes later took 2 Advil.

Luckily there's an emergency only about 5 minutes from my house here in London, Victoria Hospital.  I grabbed a face mask on the way in, got registered at 10pm and then told to sit in the little glass room for highly infected individuals.  I was surprisingly the only one in there, with my sister Christea who gracially came along to keep me company.

After 3 hours of sitting there watching the nurses chat, eat and carry on (awesome to see our tax dollars at work), I was then invited into the back and given my own little bed.  After about 30 minutes the nurse that escorted us back into the treatment area came back to take a peek on us.  We asked her if they were going to test me for H1N1 and she gave a little chuckle and said that they don't test people anymore, it's too expensive.  She said, "Can you imagine if we tested everyone that came through the doors with flu systems?"  She said they basically just assume that they/we all have H1N1 and treat them accordingly by sending them home to take Tylenol/Advil and should the symtoms get worse have them come back.  Come back??  For what??  They don't bother to test people anymore and with the 4 to 6+ hours of waiting, I'm not surprised people have died from this flu.

So let me ask this.  How and where are Canadians really getting their info?  How can flu statistics be accurate if they are NO LONGER testing people??  And what the hell is the point in making people sit in a cold, glassed in room for hours just to tell them in the end to "Just go home and take meds you can buy over the counter!"  I wasted my time & gas to end up treating this flu just like any other.

If you have thoughts on this please feel free to leave me your comments.

Amanda =)
amanda@accordingtoamanda.com