I'm fed up. I have been coughing for three weeks now, and had a full on cold for ten days. The cold has eased, but the cough remains. Off to the quack to see what they can suggest.
It is an inevitable trigger for me to think about swine 'flu. No, I'm not convinced I've got it, despite being a man, and therefore concluding that the merest sniffle is full-on-infuenza. As a parent, the notion of a serious pandemic and the risk posed to young children does cause a degree of nervous contemplation.
But there's another reason why I find myself thinking a lot about swine 'flu. As someone with an 'underlying medical condition' (although I'm not sure if I am fully in that category), such disclaimers don't offer a huge crumb of comfort when deaths are discussed on the news.
I'm relatively lucky (there's that word again) because my spinal cord injury is at such a level as to leave me with control of the muscles in my stomach and diaphragm to allow me to offer up a hearty cough. This means that I am not at an increased risk when it comes to respiratory conditions (such as 'flu). For people with higher level injuries, clearing fluid from the throat and
lungs becomes more difficult, sometimes involving 'assisted coughing' where someone pushes on the diaphragm area at the same time as the person with SCI coughs.
This means that when they talk of people dying who had 'underlying medical conditions', it is an expression that I find sobering. It is a little closer to home than I would like.
It is an inevitable trigger for me to think about swine 'flu. No, I'm not convinced I've got it, despite being a man, and therefore concluding that the merest sniffle is full-on-infuenza. As a parent, the notion of a serious pandemic and the risk posed to young children does cause a degree of nervous contemplation.
But there's another reason why I find myself thinking a lot about swine 'flu. As someone with an 'underlying medical condition' (although I'm not sure if I am fully in that category), such disclaimers don't offer a huge crumb of comfort when deaths are discussed on the news.
I'm relatively lucky (there's that word again) because my spinal cord injury is at such a level as to leave me with control of the muscles in my stomach and diaphragm to allow me to offer up a hearty cough. This means that I am not at an increased risk when it comes to respiratory conditions (such as 'flu). For people with higher level injuries, clearing fluid from the throat and
lungs becomes more difficult, sometimes involving 'assisted coughing' where someone pushes on the diaphragm area at the same time as the person with SCI coughs.
This means that when they talk of people dying who had 'underlying medical conditions', it is an expression that I find sobering. It is a little closer to home than I would like.
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