With hundreds of Australians now diagnosed with the virus, and panic building, we reveal what it’s really like to be infected with the much-feared disease.
Stephanie and Jimmy Dickson found themselves at the centre of the swine flu scare when their kids were among the first diagnosed with the disease in Australia. They were confined to their Melbourne home, and saw their children’s school closed down — but they say the growing wave of fear surrounding the bug has been blown out of proportion.
Soon after returning from a family holiday to Disneyland, their nine-year-old son Adam started coughing.
“Adam was very hot as well, so I took him to our GP,” says Stephanie. “Because we’d just got back from the US he needed to have some tests for swine flu.”
The next day, Adam tested positive for the virus, followed by brothers Danny, 10, and Josh, 12. The boys were given the antiviral drug Tamiflu, while Stephanie, Jimmy and four-year-old Charlotte were given pre-emptive doses and managed to avoid infection.
When another student at Adam’s school tested positive, the school was closed and the Dicksons placed under house quarantine for two weeks.
But despite the building cloud of fear and panic surrounding the disease, Stephanie and Jimmy insist that with proper care and treatment the virus was nothing worse than a bad cold.
“By the time we got the results the day after taking Adam to the doctor, he was up and about,” says Jimmy. “Within two days, all the boys were back to their usual selves.
“It was just like they had colds – they had a bit of a runny nose, but nothing you’d normally even worry about. They weren’t complaining about feeling ill and they had loads of energy.”
The family says the enforced home-stay simply meant the boys had an extended holiday…
Read the full story in this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale June 8, 2009.
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