By Brad Devereaux

“You got the flu? Then you best stay home.”
I’ve heard this statement uttered or written in many variations over the past couple weeks. The flu season is starting early this year and with the new types of flu strains that have surprised the world, people just don’t want to risk contracting a virus.
So when I got sick last Friday, Oct. 23, I knew it would be a rocky road to recovery.
I felt sick on my way into work last Friday. I took most of the day off to try to get myself healthy, but it didn’t feel like an emergency. I felt sick, but it just felt like a cold. I decided to stay out of the clinic and hoped it would quickly blow over.
I traveled to Lander for the volleyball tournament, armed with some herbal tea and a Halloween candy’s bag worth of throat lozenges. I shot photos at the first part of the tournament without a problem, then went to bed early for the next day of tournament action.
But I woke up in bad shape. Whatever I had hit me hard and wouldn’t let me stand up without making me feel like I was about to faint. I ached, my throat hurt, I felt nauseous and I had a fever. I asked David to cover the rest of the tourney and went back to Lovell with a red face and a hacking cough.
The next week I was up and down. One minute I thought I had a serious ailment and the next I felt fine. That continued until this weekend, when I finally recovered, for the most part.
The only problem was that my voice was still in trouble. My sore throat was hanging around longer than the winter moon in Antarctica.
Anytime I spoke, my throat felt like it was being shredded with coarse sandpaper, and my voice consisted of some low-pitched tones along with an occasional high pitched squeak or honk. Sometimes a planned word wouldn’t sound at all, and I was left with a hissing that sounded like a sporadic gas leak from a pressurized pipe in the wall.
“Hhhh, hhhhello, this is Brad at the Chronicle,” I would bark as I forced the air support to form a word as I called around to get the scoop from the many people I talk to every week.
I tried to do as much reporting over the phone as I could. I felt bad walking into the offices and schools, knowing I was carrying some type of virus that could leap off of me and cling to anyone else around. A few germ-conscious people told me to stay away or tucked themselves into a corner when I entered the room (not that I blame them).
Because of my impending voice annoyance, I decided to finally go to the clinic Monday. After checking me out, the doctor told me it was no doubt a viral infection and the hissing pipe voice was just a remnant of the main infection. The course of action was to take an antihistamine to reduce respiratory drainage and wait it out.
That’s what I was afraid of.
I have been playing my voice like the stock market, speaking when it’s doing good and retaining silence when it takes a turn for the worse. But it is slowly getting better and it could definitely be worse -- at least I’m not in broadcast journalism.
So did I have the swine flu? I just don’t know. I’m no doctor, but I think I had symptoms from the H1N1 flu, Influenza A and the common cold. I even thought it could’ve been strep throat or something, but the doctor ruled that one out. The doctor said I was too far past my original symptoms to tell exactly what I had.
Regardless, he told me to get a H1N1 vaccine in case what I had was merely a cold, and the swine flu could still be a threat to my immune system. He said NBHH is currently waiting to receive some of the vaccinations. I decided that I would try to get a vaccination when it’s available, because if the swine flu is worse than what I had, I could be in for a long and miserable winter.
But for now, I’m waiting it out. I don’t have a cough and I haven’t had a fever for more than a week, so I don’t think I’m spreading the virus anymore. My horse voice still instills a sense of fear in the germ-conscious, but I hope it will be back to normal soon so I can be reintroduced into society.