Word: bonilla
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Anthony J. Bonilla ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Wigglesworth Hall...
...runner with a trim muscular upper body, Bonilla says he is normally in good health, and never used to be concerned about flu. "I used to think it was just something that you got in the night and that was gone the next day," he says. He hoped it would be the same when he felt a sore throat and headache develop on April 22. But the next day his temperature shot up to 102 degrees and his throat closed so tightly he could hardly breathe. "I didn't want to upset my wife and daughters, so I tried...
...Just as Bonilla was being struck down, news flashed up on the television about how the swine flu virus had been found in Mexico. His wife rushed him to a public hospital in his Iztapalapa district and he was rapidly put in isolation with five other patients. "We had no communication with the outside world - no newspapers or telephones - so we didn't know much about this swine flu or how bad it was," he recalls. "When the woman died we were scared that this could be the fate of us all." Their fears only increased when a doctor...
Doctors soon gave Bonilla an anti-viral drug that is known in Mexico as oseltamivir (and more popularly known as Tamiflu) making his condition rapidly improve. In some ways, the timing of sickness was lucky, he says. Once they had identified swine flu on April 23, Mexican health authorities rushed anti-virals to hospitals and found they were very effective. But many who had started suffering before had already developed severe pneumonia; and for some, it was too late to be saved. The errors in treatment in the first weeks of the outbreak do much to explain the higher death...
...Bonilla finally left hospital after five days - a period after which he was unlikely to be still contagious. However, he was told to remain in his apartment for another eight days, while his grandchildren stayed with relatives. No other family members have developed symptoms, reflecting a relatively low infection-rate of the virus. Bonilla is still visibly shaken by his brush with swine flu and concerned about the disease spreading around the planet. But he says that it has taught him one positive thing: to appreciate what he has. "I know that I am lucky to be here getting...