You’re stuffy, you’re dizzy and you ache all over. You can’t get up because it makes you feel queasy. Most of us have had it, and we’ve all heard about it. Yes, it’s that time of year again... it’s the flu or, as doctors like to call it, the influenza season. Now what does this have to do with H.M.C? Well, we were just one of many schools to suffer an outbreak of what is believed to be influenza type A.

          Just a few weeks ago, I found myself sick at home in bed. After staying up all night with nausea and stuffiness, I was condemned to stay home from school. As the day wore on, I continued to experience feelings of dizziness, and fever. After school, when I received a phone call from a friend, I realized that I wasn’t the only one ill. Through further investigation, I discovered that there were close to 150 people (staff and students) sick from school that day with the same symptoms. Meanwhile, at school, there were many people sitting alone at their tables, wondering where their friends had gone and wondering who else was going to come down with the illness.

After two days of mass absences, the office started to check in on some of the students. The school called me and asked me the reason for my absence. Then they told my mother that I was to stay home for 48 hours after the symptoms ended. A few days later, we got a call from a Public Health nurse and I was asked to describe my symptoms. By that time I was beginning to get a bit worried, but I was eventually assured by the health department that everything was all right.

          When I returned to school the next week, things were as hectic as ever. All the “sickies” were scrambling to get their assignments in on time. After talking with some other people around the school, I had found that a lot of people had had the same illness.

We then received a letter that was going home from the office, informing us that four cases of influenza A had been identified and confirmed in the school. After reading the list of the symptoms, many were similar to mine. As a result of the outbreak, the letter informed students about an ‘emergency’ flu shot clinic that was coming to our school the next day.

In light of all this, I decided to further research the flu and its shot. As it turns out, there is a new type of flu circulating in Canada. It’s called A Fejian. It’s similar to another strand of flu called A Panama. It was expected to hit many places in Canada and, like all strands of flu, it’s contagious. Flu experts say that even though the flu shot doesn’t cover this strand, it is close enough to A Panama that it will either protect you against it, or help you cope with it. Could this be what our school came down with? No one knows for sure.

Most of this outbreak left our school just as fast as it came. Was it influenza A or something else? Although we are still seeing chronic absences around the school, things are slowly returning to normal. To stop this from happening again, my message to all H.M.C is to get your flu shot, because a moment of pain could save you from a week at home in bed. A week at home to us students can put us behind in our learning