Written by Blake Mathews
The H1N1 virus, better known as the swine flu, has been a cause of international concern and even panic since its discovery last spring. Fear of an unstoppable epidemic drove the virus into newspaper headlines, talk shows and, eventually, popular culture.
As several Harding students found out, the actual H1N1 virus was somewhat less sensational than the rumors that preceded it.
Ben Leeper, a sophomore living in Allen Hall, had not been phased by the media-generated panic surrounding swine flu. Even as bottles of GermX began proliferating across campus and RAs in his dorm pulled out boxes of latex gloves, Leeper insisted that the whole thing was “really not as big of a deal as people think it is.”
Now, Leeper can speak from experience. He was diagnosed with swine flu on Sept 13, and for the better part of a week the virus kept him pinned down in his dorm.
The trouble started on Thursday, Sept 10, when Leeper said he started feeling tightness in his chest and had respiratory difficulties. His father, a pediatrician, told him not to assume that it was swine flu. As an asthmatic, Leeper had other diseases to worry about.
“It was a toss up between pneumonia and flu,” Leeper said. In the past, pneumonia had aggravated his asthma to the point of pleurisy, a disorder that causes sharp pain in the victim’s chest with every deep breath. Leeper described that experience as “the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”
That weekend brought no relief to Leeper, who felt progressively worse as the symptoms began piling up. On Saturday he developed a fever, and by 3:00 on Sunday morning, the virus “hit [him] like a brick wall.”
“When I get sick I get hit pretty hard,” Leeper said. “I mean, I usually end up in a hospital.” This time was no exception. A bad case of chills and triple-digit fever wrenched him from sleep and sent Leeper jumping into the shower to bring his temperature down. Later that day, he was sitting in the ER of the White County Medical Center.
After a “frustrating” two hour wait, doctors tested Leeper for signs of pneumonia, but came back with a different verdict: H1N1. One of the doctors told him that the fever would be more intense than the normal, seasonal flu, but the virus would run its course in less time. Armed with a prescription for Tamiflu, Leeper settled back into his room and started waiting out the swine flu.
“If you get it, it’s not like you have a 50 percent chance of dying,” Leeper said. Still, the next few days brought out the fear that media coverage of the epidemic has instilled in the people around him. “It’s almost like you walk out and they’re like ‘Oh, that’s the swine flu person that’s in mortal danger,'” he said. Leeper’s mother even offered to come down and pull him out of Allen for a couple nights in a hotel while he recuperated. He said he talked her out of it.
Though not overtly worried about his fate, Leeper still suffered from aching muscles, intense shaking and the ever-present fever. He was told to take aspirin every three hours to bring down his high temperature, but even with medicine the fever did not subside until Monday night.
“I would say it was only two days of ‘bad,'” Leeper said. Friends and spectators alike asked him what it was like to live under the pall of the dreaded H1N1 virus. “Well, I have the flu,” he would tell them.
As the week wore on, the flu symptoms began to disappear. By Thursday, Leeper had stopped taking painkillers for his aching muscles, and on Friday he went back to class. On Monday, barely a week after being diagnosed with swine flu, Leeper said he had been working out in the gym. Except for some lingering respiratory issues, he said, the virus had completely left him.
Over in Kendall Hall, sophomore Ryan McAlister was not fairing much better. She realized on Tuesday, Sept 8 that the headaches, sore throat and nausea she had been experiencing were not going to go away after a nap.
“I was like ‘I’m fine, I’ll be fine,” McAlister said. The attitude sustained her through classes on Tuesday, but that night she felt “miserable.” Student Health Services diagnosed her with a simple sore throat the next day and sent her back to her room with cough drops, some Dramamine and orders to go back to bed. But the nap did nothing to ease her nausea, so McAlister went to see a doctor at PrimeCare Medical Clinic in Searcy.
“They tested me for strep and for the flu, and they stuck these things up my nose, and it hurt,” she said. The doctor knew within minutes that she had the flu, but could not confirm if it was H1N1. Once again, McAlister was sent back to her room.
Then she began vomiting.
“That was the one symptom of swine flu that I was missing, the vomit,” she said. McAlister called PrimeCare back and was confirmed to have contracted swine flu.
The other symptoms on the list, diarrhea, a sore throat and headaches, made life difficult for McAlister as she battled the flu. But the nausea and vomiting put her through the worst, she said. At one point, McAlister had to have her bed moved down to the floor from the top bunk. It was the only way she could make it to the bathroom in time, and so avoid throwing up on the floor.
“My roommate said she’s never seen anyone so sick,” McAlister said. “She was actually slightly perturbed.”
But McAlister’s roommate, and the other girls in Kendall, refused to abandon her to the disease. They brought her Gatorade and soup and filled her prescriptions of Tamiflu and fenegrin, a pill for her nausea. McAlister’s roommate stayed up with her when she would have to vomit during the night.
“The girls were fantastic,” she said. “I felt like I was pampered.”
In one instance, McAlister wanted to sit in the lobby while fighting her nausea. Laying down was not an option, as it upset her stomach, but she said the chairs in her room were too hard for her. Seeing the implications of have a contagious swine flu carrier in the Kendall lobby, dorm mom Donna Strachan and a handful of girls had one of the padded lobby chairs brought into McAlister’s room so she could stay upright in comfort.
With a little help from her friends, McAlister made it to Friday, when her nausea finally died down. She recovered over the weekend to the point that she was ready to go back to class on Monday. McAlister then discovered that she was not completely finished with the H1N1 virus: it had left her with plenty of work to make up.
The rumors of students being forcibly quarantined while they have swine flu proved unfounded for both Leeper and McAlister. Leeper’s roommate, whom Leeper described as being apathetic toward the idea of a contagious virus, never left the room. McAlister’s roommate stayed with her through the worst of it. Neither of the roommates contracted the virus.
Nurse Lynn McCarty of Harding’s Student Health Services said the university asks infected students to stay in their rooms for seven days, or until they have been without a fever and not taking aspirin for 24 hours. However, this policy applies to all communicable diseases, not just swine flu, and no one is in charge of enforcing it. Student Health Services will also call infirmed students every day to check on their progress, McClarty said.
Having survived the actual threat of swine flu, Leeper still described himself as “the biggest advocate of ‘it’s not a big deal.'” However, he encouraged students who thought they had the virus to consult a doctor and not try to wait it out unaided.
“The swine flu, it gets hyped up a lot,” Leeper said. “I mean, it’s bad, but it gets hyped up a lot.”
He holds his father’s initial advice as the best defense against all the rumors and worries that came with the swine flu epidemic: “Don’t worry, you’re not going to drop dead.”
