Pond Inlet’s secret swine flu outbreak

I read and smirk when I look at public posts about the H1N1 flu in Nunavut, such as, “There are four confirmed cases of H1N1….”

I smirk because the posts are often clearly outdated, yet are not removed or replaced with a new update.

It’s now near the end of September. I highly suspect that I had the swine flu in mid-July. I was in Pond Inlet then, enjoying my summer holidays back home. But there was no fanfare. Zilch. Nada.

I “suspect” because it was hard to get any kind of information about the flu. Nobody dared say anything about the flu, it seemed.

I only put two and two together and guessed I contracted it from family members. Not long after I arrived on July 7, my cousin had flu-like symptoms.

My son then contracted it, passing it on to me and then I to my two daughters, one of them being three months old. My husband had it last.

A week later, an extended family member got tested and found she had tested positive for the H1N1. It just seemed like every place we visited had a sick family member.

The first thing I said to my Mom was; “Ma! I want a T-shirt that says, “I survived the swine flu!” – because I survived it without knowing I had even contracted it.

I sort of guessed I had it and a good friend told me to check my symptoms to compare them with the ones posted by Health and Social Services. Unfortunately, the symptoms listed were not that much different from any old flu; fever, coughing, runny nose etc. So, I couldn’t tell whether I really had it.

So, I will tell you what distinctive symptoms my husband and I had in this one: it felt like I had rubbery ankle joints in the morning and I wobbled getting my coffee.

The other weird thing about this flu was that it felt like you weren’t sick during the day — only at night. For a week and a half, I would get up and go about my business during the day and get really exhausted at night and experience my flu-like symptoms then.

The last flu I had in the year 2000 knocked me out cold for a week. My family members didn’t contract it — so this sort of points to the fact that H1N1 is highly and voraciously contagious.

The H1N1 kept playing tricks on me — I thought it was over during the day, only to feel sick again at night.

Joking aside about the T-shirt, I heard worse cases from other residents of Pond Inlet. Some had to be medivaced and hospitalized for quite some time.

Yet there was no fanfare, no announcements, nothing.

I can understand health officials wanting to be sensitive about the issue and not wanting to set off alarms in Nunavut.

But why be so heavily secretive about it? It’s the flu. It’s not some embarrassing condition like the ones that required legitimate sensitivity.

It would have made more sense to release information without alarming people – as they initially did on the national CBC when the first outbreaks came and which they are doing now as the fall season begins.

So there you have it. Pond Inlet had an outbreak. In silence.

Given that the virus is highly contagious, I wouldn’t be surprised if other Nunavut communities experienced similar outbreaks as well. This means many of us will be immune.

But hopefully for those that didn’t catch the spring-summer infections, people will be better informed and properly prepared for the fall flu season — especially for those who require extra care, such as pregnant women and young adults.

Sandra Omik
Iqaluit

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