A couple of weeks ago I had an irritation in my left nostril, the left ear and slight cough also. Oh my God, I was scared that I had contacted swine flu. The day before I had gone to receive a friend at the airport, a Lecturer from Pune University
Pune has been in the news for many days with all news channels giving the news – Swine Flu spreads in Pune – from dawn to dusk. They have also been giving live telecasts of interviews from residents of Pune who cannot even spell the name of the disease. ‘Breaking news’ became ‘repeating news’.
What are these news channels up to? Giving news, in my opinion, is distinct from repeating news. But all the news channels tend to repeat the news all through the day until they are able to rub it in like Iodex. After all, who would listen to the news channels if they did not have something important or newsworthy to show?
Basically, hot news is their bread and breakfast. Well, nowadays every news channel has nothing to talk about except swine flu and how dangerous it is.
These headlines will not allow the public to remain calm. Yes, some doctors who are answering questions on TV are telling the public not to panic. Some doctors say that it’s curable even without medication, that swine flu is a mild disease, that people , who already have other medical problems , get complications and die. The death is more often than not, is attributed as death due to swine flu to make the interesting data voluminous.
The most enlightened people are also worried. The people have panicked, there are long queues of panicky people in hospitals for testing . There are news of increasing deaths, and also contradictory statements by doctors. One even said that the earlier you take Tamiflu the better it is; another says to wait and watch and see if it gets cured its own.
Another one says Tamiflu has to be given in the first 48 hours or it is of no use, and another says that one should only give it only if the patient is seriously ill, because of the serious side effects.
I am sure all of these statements must have some truth in them but most non-medical people don’t know what to make of it. One doctor actually said that we in India, don’t know enough about the flu so one cannot be sure how exactly to deal with it! I think he should be sent to Mexico to study the disease and its cure. Well, I am sure that most of us don’t know enough about various diseases, and such statements confuse people. One news channel was talking in terms of “survivors” from swine flu.
So, to cut the long story short, I had irritation in my left ear and nostril. Scared as I was I by all the swine flu reports, I went to a physician. After the check he said that I had an allergy. ‘Allergy’, my foot.
He gave me a prescription and asked me to come after a week. A hundred bucks gone down the drain. Some of the doctors who cannot diagnose an illness properly, diagnose it as ‘allergy’ or a ‘viral’ disease.
As I was too much scared about the issue due to the ‘repeating news’, I thought I should go to the best ENT doctor in the area.
I told him about the irritation in the nostril and also that there was pain in the head whenever I coughed. After hearing the entire story he sent me for an MRI test.
Yes Doctor, I said in my mind.
Surely friends, this world is a funny place.
Ravi Matah