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Flying the Coop and Resisting Bird Flu

  • Marissa Cardwell
  • Jan 30, 2016
  • 3 min read

With the recent panic surrounding outbreaks of Ebola around the world, my mind can't help but travel back to a similar time in my life where I wasn't lucky enough to resist the scary foreign disease of the time.

In 2003, when I was just eight years old, there was much concern about the prevalence of Avian Flu in poultry around the world. What started in Asia had begun to spread to Africa, Europe, and eventually the U.S.

While the outbreak mainly affected wild birds and farm animals, there were several cases around the world in which humans caught the virus, but these were mostly people who had contact with infected birds, which was not the case for me.

As an eight-year-old, the outbreak of Avian Flu in 2003 didn't really affect my daily life. My parents didn't seem very concerned with the matter, and all of our poultry-eating customs remained the same. It wasn't until one morning in September that Bird Flu started to matter.

As I woke up that morning, I remember experiencing all the sypmtoms of the common flu, only they felt ten times worse than anything I had ever experienced. My temperature was high and rising, my intestines were on fire, and all I wanted to do was stare at the ceiling and moan audibly. This being true, being able to stay home from school made the symptoms feel a little less draining. As I went through the day, staying home with my grandmother, I began to feel more and more weak, and my fever had risen to an alarming tempurature. As I tried to ignore the pain, my second grade mind had begun to wonder if what I was going through was really just the regular flu, which I had had many times before.

I remember at about 4:00pm, after not being able to keep anything down all day (which was especially devastating since my grandma was an amazing cook), I knew I couldn't take it anymore. I had to "fly the coop" and get some medical attention. I called my mom and told her that something felt really wrong, so she left work to bring me to the hopsital.

After sitting in the waiting room or several hours, we were finally seen by a doctor, and they ran several tests for what seemed like hours. The doctors told my parents that they believed I had Avian Influenza, which shocked them. As Americans, they never expected to be impacted personally by an illness they believed was mostly a foreign problem.

The doctors asked that I be brought back for testing and treatment every day for the next two weeks, an offer my parents did not accept. It turns out having sub-par health insurance and a cranky, sick eight-year-old doesn't lend well to that sort of intense involvement. Not to mention the fact that our local hospital, in the middle of Syracuse, NY, was not exactly the most kid-friendly environment. Even with opting out of the daily treatment, I was still able to recover quickly with the prescriptions and guidelines the doctors gave me, and the flu was gone within a week.

Looking back on the experience, I realize how much place really matters. As a United States citizen, living in a suburb, in a home with just my immediate family, the implications of the Avian Influenza were not as extreme as they might have been for others around the world. I didn't have to worry about infecting my family members or what contracting the illness meant for my farm and poultry sales. All I had to do was take the meds and get better.

Though I do have to admit, I will always have an unwavering suspicion when it comes to wild birds.


 
 
 

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