It all started two Sunday’s ago, when my 3 1/2 year old uncharacteristically crawled up on my chest and passed out. Yep – she had a fever and (later) some goopy eyes for which we took her to the Doc to get some drops so her eyes wouldn’t seal shut. Other than the fever occasionally spiking, and having to keep her out of school, she did fine.

By Thursday night, she’s fever free and I am planning to get my life back in order. That evening, I get the fever. To make it worse, my daughter spikes her last fever. From here, she improves, but I have the fever up and down for two days that turns into a visious upper respiratory infection. Willing to self diagnose, I checked the CDC, which says to stay away from folks for 24 hours after the fever abated.

Bonus, even thought I am caughing non-stop, I kicked the fever by Saturday night, and I don’t have to burn a PTO (aka vacation) day on Monday to stay home from work. By 3:30 I was shot and left work to come home and crawl in bed.

Side-note: I owe the H1N1 for my discovery and current addiction to listening to every dirt bag diary as superior alternative to television.

On Tuesday, I was back at work ready to defend my PTO for that next powder day. This time, by 3pm, I could feel the fever, the shakes, and the weakness kicking in big time. I barely made it down the street and into my car. At home, my fever was over 102.

It was my wife who insisted we go to the ER. It was 9pm and she didn’t want to go in the middle of the night when it would be difficult to find someone to watch Anne. Our neighbor came over to watch Anne, and off we went.

So now, my sage advise: The ER doc was unimpressed. I’m probable flu case number 1,XXX for him. He said “You probably have the H1N1. In fact, everyone is probably going to get it. In fact, we’re not testing for H1N1 any more. Rest, drink 2x the normal fluids, don’t cough or sneeze on your spouse, wash your hands, and don’t go to work stupid.” He took an x-ray to confirm I didn’t have Pneumonia — negative.

Why did I go back? I awoke at 3:30 AM with a painful (7 our of 10) side at the bottom of my right lung. It wouldn’t go away. My wife made an appointment, and I lay on the couch listening to more Dirt bag diaries until noon.

The new Doc was no more impressed than the last one. Likely I had bruised or irritated the lung lining due to all my coughing — The Ibuprofin that I had been taking every 6 hrs (interspersed with Tylenol also every 6 hrs) was the best trick. Otherwise all the other advise was the same…

Bottom Line: The flu sucks. The H1N1 sucks. It will wipe you out for days. Even longer if you don’t chill like me. If you can avoid it — consider yourself lucky.

As I write this, I’m recovering from my own bout with the H1N1. In fact, our kids’ school was cancelled today because so many kids and staff were sick. 6 of 7 of our family has had it. In general, we’ve had a day or so of fever, with a total of about 3-4 days of body aches. As far as flu goes, it’s not bad at all, I can remember being flattened for a week a few years ago.

For me, it’s been interesting to look at this as a “dry run” for a more virulent flu or other pandemic. Contrary to my previous statement, we did not go into self-quarantine when the first cases showed up here. But that’s because experience had proven the H1N1 to be relatively mild. When our first child came down with symptoms, it was only a matter of a couple days before the rest of us had it. Any idea of keeping her downstairs in her room to minimize contact with the rest of the family went out the window. Between school, pre-school, church, work, commuting, and general socializing our families are exposed so thoroughly that unless we went into hiding at the first sign of a contagious disease hitting our shores, it’s almost impossible to avoid the germs. We have sanitizer in every vehicle, by the door to use when we come in, etc. And we encouraged hand-washing. Nevertheless, here I am on the couch in my pajamas.

What would we do differently? Hard to say, but it’s clear that the main reason we didn’t take extraordinary precautions was that the virus isn’t that virulent. But, if we did have an outbreak of something truly dangerous, I would be much more likely to self-quarantine based on our experience this time. We would be much more vigilant about hygiene and avoiding exposure. Because now we’ve had a close-up example of just how fast a virus can spread.

We will indeed suffer a pandemic virus of major proportions at some point even perhaps sooner than later. The fact remains that regular old influenza, even this season passed to many more people and likely killed more people than H1N1 has now.

So grab the Purell and pay attention. Eventually, the boy who cried “wolf” was correct and we know what happened to the people who didn’t listen…