Sick as a Dog

Sick as a dog, she is. The Minister of Health has announced that of all flu cases in Lebanon, 80% are H1N1. None of the hype you read about in other Middle Eastern countries is taking place here. I was pleasantly surprised about that. I remember a solar eclipse a couple of years ago. You’d think the world was coming to an end. No one ventured out for some 4 hours.

But this swine flu is not getting the Lebanese down. It’s a flu. We get flu all the time.

About half of Hana's class has been out already with fly symptoms. The neighboring school has had to close one section for a week because the student body was ‘infected.

And yesterday was her turn. 40 degrees fever. My children become extremely eloquent and polite when they have a fever. I don’t know what it is, but they become quite pleasant.

But with all this hype about swine flu, I call her doctor.
Should I worry?, I ask him.

“About what,” he asks me. “Worry whether it is the swine flu? Well, if it is, what are you going to do about it? She’s got the flue. I can’t do anything about that either.”

I like a level-headed doctor. The Dutch in general do not like to medicate their children. Better to ‘sick it out’, and build up a resistance. I took me quite some time to find a Lebanese doctor who understood that cultural quirk.

“It’s green,” says the doctor, “I got to go. Call me if it gets any worse.”