Suddenly the swine flu pandemic hits home ........ too close to home ....... actually in the home! And you realise first hand how the carefully prepared emergency plan doesn't actually work in practice.
The scenario goes like this. Five Australians arrive on Tuesday from Melbourne to visit for a month. (Mrs Journeyman's brother and his family). They are supposed to stay with us for the first few days and then transfer today to a caravan at a local holiday park. Yesterday the youngest two, aged 1 and 3 are not feeling very well. The youngest one was born 4 months premature and, as a result, has lung problems so, to be on the safe side, his mum and Mrs Journeyman took him up to the Medical Walk-In Centre last night for a check-up. As soon as the receptionist saw the word "Australia" on the paperwork she decided it must be swine flu. She wasn't having any of that in her clinic so she ordered them home with a phone number and told them to ring the out-of-hours doctor. This they duly did. The doctor said he could see them at 10.20pm but they would have to come in. Guess where? ............. Right next door to the Walk-in Centre. They actually share the same reception desk! So back they went across town. This time, after a brief examination, they were told to go and wait in the car park. Luckily it was fairly warm last night but even so, a 25 minute wait outside with a sick 1-year-old is somewhat stressfull. ........ so they gave up and came home. Shortly afterwards we got a phone call to say that a doctor would come out in the morning to take some swabs. Finally got to bed at 00.45 (way past my bedtime).
Nine o'clock this morning the flying doctor car arrives. Doctor gets out and kits up in the street with face mask, apron and gloves. He's obviously not used to this because it takes several attempts to get the mask on properly. Then he comes in with two pre-wrapped packets. Each contains the necessary equipment for taking, preserving, packing and labelling a throat swab. All goes well with the one year old. He then opens the second pack to swab the 3 year old and finds there is no preserving medium present. He goes out to the car to fetch the other two packs he had brought, only to find they had no medium either. His driver is promptly dispatched back to base to get some more sampling kits. She eventually returns and says she found the medium in the fridge. So the second swab is taken. He has brought a prescription for Tamiflu for the youngest but not for the other child. I explain that the whole Australian family is due to move onto a caravan later today. Doctor says he will contact the Health Protection Unit and take advice on that, and also write out a prescription for the other child. He disappears out to the car for ages.
Eventually he returns to inform us that the two sick children must be quarantined in the house but that anyone with no symptoms can go where they like. He hands over the two prescriptions and says we can get the Tamiflu at Boots. So Mrs Journeyman and I set of to get the medication. We go to our local pharmacy where we know the owner (it's also much closer than Boots). They look at the prescriptions and shake their heads. "We don't keep that in stock". "Alright", I said, "we'll carry on to Boots". "They won't have any either", the pharmacist said, "local Tamiflu is all kept at a central point ........ in this case... (wait for it) ......the Walk-in Centre!".
She then phoned the Head of Medicines and Pharmaceuticals (who just happened to be on holiday in Yorkshire - but she answered anyway!). She then had to ring the Walk-in Centre to arrange the medication for us because the original doctor had put the doseage at 2ml twice a day when the doseage should have been 30 mg twice a day. How many mgs you get in a ml will obviously depend on the concentration of the liquid, which was not specified.
So eventually we got the medication. And we also get to keep the Australians until we get the test results.
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