How do we know how many swine flu cases there are?

It was just after 11 p.m. when I heard the door shut. Syd was home from a four-day business trip to the Coast.

Her timing was perfect — I was lying in bed beginning to feel sorry for myself.

“How’d everything go?” she asked.

“I seem to have a thing happening with my stomach,” I said.

Twenty minutes later, there was definitely something going on with my stomach. And all the associated piping. At that point, a voice inside me started saying, “Run. Run now!”

Fortunately, I heeded the warning, sprinting into the bathroom just in time.

“I love you,” Syd said when I crawled back to bed. “But I’m moving to the couch.”

From then on, about every half hour, my totally confused bodily functions kept me staggering back and forth from bed to bathroom and back. It was exhausting.

Finally, around 6 a.m., there were signs of cessation.

“Stay at least 10 feet away from me for seven days,” Syd advised as she came in, bleary eyed, from the living room. “That’s what they say.”

“No problem,” I moaned.

“Seriously. And I think we better find out if it’s the swine flu and you’re going to kill off half of Kamloops.”

“It’s gastro enteritis, not the swine flu,” I said.

“We better find out, anyway,” she said, and left.

When she came back, she dropped a few sheets of paper a safe distance from the bed and said, “I looked it up on the Internet. It says nausea, diarrhea and vomiting are sometimes among the symptoms for swine flu.”

I was still skeptical, but reluctantly groped for the printouts and read what they had to say about swine flu.

The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed Syd’s research. The swine flu virus, it said, is highly contagious. People who suspect they have it should keep themselves isolated for a week.

This convinced me I should at least do the responsible thing and follow whatever clear procedures I was sure the medical health community had laid out for anyone with the flu.

According to the bumph Syd printed out from the Interior Health Authority, I should call HealthLink B.C. for further advice. So, after reporting in to work that I was taking a sick day, I dialled the HealthLink number.

A nice gentleman who answered the phone asked me the nature of my complaint and noted the call might be monitored for quality assurance purposes. (Always a good idea when dealing with life or death situations.)

“I’m telling you, it was awful,” I began. “It was green, it was purple, it was —.”

“And how may I help you?” he interrupted, pleasantly, of course.

I explained I just wanted to know how to proceed, in view of the swine flu thing.

He decided he should pass me on to a nurse for a consult. Good, I thought. This is progress.

“I’m required to state, first of all, that I’m not qualified to give a diagnosis over the phone,” said the nurse in his preamble.

After listening to my sad story, he said, “Have you been to Mexico?”

“Not since 1987,” I said. “We had this great hotel right on the beach —“

“Do you know anyone who’s been there in the last few months?”

“Well, usually, half of Kamloops has been there by this time of year –“

“No, I mean, specifically, as in names.”

“Well, no.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. He was likely either checking to make sure the quality-assurance recording system was functioning, or calling over his co-workers to get a load of this one.

“Perhaps you should see your doctor, or go into a clinic.”

“Oh,” I said. “I was hoping you might actually give me a clue as to how we narrow this thing down. Will my doctor be able to test me for it?”

“Not likely,” he said. “It doesn’t sound as though you’re seriously ill. They’re only testing in the most serious cases. Everybody who’s ever seen a picture of Mexico wants to be tested for swine flu right now, and they just can’t keep up.”

He had one more piece of advice. “You should stay hydrated. Gaterade mixed 50-50 with water is good.”

Thanking him, I hung up and dialled my doctor’s office. “We’re full right up today,” said the receptionist after I told my story. “We have no openings at all.”

Thus ended my swine flu quest. Instead, I boned up on gastro enteritis, and decided to go with the option of a three-day contagious period after the cessation of symptoms.

Meanwhile, Syd tossed me a pencil and a note pad. “Jot down everything you’ve touched in this house during the last 48 hours,” she ordered. “You know, the phone, the TV remote. One can’t be too careful.”

And here I am, back at work. Either I had the fastest case of swine flu on record, or my original diagnosis was correct. But it does make one wonder, when we hear all these stories about how many confirmed cases of swine flu there are — how the heck does anyone really know?

There could be thousands more cases out there, calling Healthlink and being advised to stop whining and drink plenty of fluids.