DS has a D&V bug, fever, plus a non blanching rash - your usual toddler weekend special virus. Now I am not particularly worried but ring the out of hours service just for advice and they insist I attend (even though he's vaxed against Meningitis B and C and his chances of contracting Meningitis A are v small.
Anyway we arrive and start to walk through the door and are told to stop by a security guard. He point at a sign which says we should not enter if we think we have swine flu (not coughing or looking any more like death than anyone else who has been shat and puked on for the last 24 hours ). Then a nurse turns up and takes our temperatures and pronounces DS to be 'feverish' (umm yes 37.5 is technically feverish but he's been up to 39.8 last night - so to me, that's an improvement.
So we are immediately shepherded in bypassing the desk and placed at one end of the waiting room - with a roped off area placed between us and the rest of the waiting room. There are four other families in the 'general' waiting room bit and they are being seen by other doctors.
Obviously there is sod all wrong with DS other than a virus and we are quickly on our way.
However, I would like to know just how a velvet rope prevents the transmission of Swine flu???? Or indeed if it makes sense to put people who clearly don't have swine flu (we've had it before), with people who may well have. We had to walk through the general waiting area to get to the 'isolation' area . If I was a coffin Henry spluttering as I went, I would have infected every bugger in the room before I even ventured beyond the sacred velvet rope.