THE UNKINDEST COUGH OF ALL

I have a confession to make; last week I was off with the flu.

Is this what it's come to? Do we now have to hang our heads in shame because we are struck down with the ubiquitous flu? I remember the days when getting sick elicited feelings of empathy from kind souls appearing on your doorsteps with fruit baskets. Not now. Having a temperature is the modern-day equivalent of leprosy.

I pine for the days when bad credit and/or genital herpes were society's great turn-offs. Back then one could sneeze and a friendly "gesundheit" would emanate from the lips of the nearest stranger. I first noticed this change in our society about a month ago when, from the back seat of a taxi, I coughed.

No, not a thunderous, phlegmy, guttural cough stirring the very bowels of my lungs. An acceptable, almost foppish "a-hem" as we ploughed our way through the streets of Klong Toey onto the freeway. But the driver - who I might add had just extinguished a cigarette as I climbed into his nicotine-stained carriage - immediately wound down his window and stuck his diminutive Isan nose out into the Bangkok pollution, as if that was somehow going to save him from the dreaded farang coughing his guts out in the back seat. Lung cancer, mai pen rai. Farang flu, not on your life.

I have to say I was a little offended, but this is the situation we are facing in Bangkok these days. Have you noticed that everybody, everybody, is sick? I caught mine somewhere between Ramkhamhaeng and a radio station at Klong Toey last Monday.

Late on Monday afternoon I was my usual bright, bubbly neurotic self. By 10 pm, I was a hot blob of quivering flesh, with tunnel vision and a decided disinterest in my future plans. By Tuesday morning I was preparing myself for a trip to my local hospital.

Visiting a hospital in Thailand always reminds me of my youth. Every August in Brisbane, Australia, we had what we called the Exhibition, a gathering of Queensland's best of all things agricultural, if not cerebral, for one glorious week. It was the one week of the year the state's farmers donned their best Akubra hats and stood together in circles boastfully comparing the size of their best horse studs.

Going to the Exhibition was an assault on your senses - the smell of beer, sawdust, horse and sheep manure, fried foods and more horse manure. But this is not why it reminds me of Thai hospitals. As a kid you had to go to the Exhibition pavilions where you bought what we called "sample bags" full of colourful cheap and nasty games and chocolates.

Now I'm all grown up and here in Thailand I have a very good hospital nearby that treats you like a king - until they shove a thermometer into your mouth. Your temperature determines whether you remain on the throne or head straight to the guillotine. When I arrived that Tuesday morning a handsome young man in a suit escorted me over to an attractive young nurse who took my blood pressure and then placed a thermometer in my mouth.

"I don't have a temperature," I said rather pathetically as her hand, sensibly ensconced in rubber gloves, guided the mercury under my tongue.

Three minutes later, it was a different story.

"It's 38.5," she said not sympathetically. "You have a temperature."

She may as well have said: "You're the weakest link. Goodbye." The suited young man suddenly whipped out a surgical mask and handed it to me. "You'll be required to wear this khrab," he says, in a tone of voice that suggests nearby security guards might rough me up if I fail to heed his advice.

Now I am a leper. He, too, is wearing a mask as he guides me into the antiseptic depths of despair known as the waiting room. Here, dozens of other masked folk are sitting, waiting for their names to be called. The young man isn't quite as friendly, nor does he seem to be smiling anymore - not that I would know from behind his mask. After depositing me in the waiting room he shuffles off in the direction of the bathrooms, no doubt shedding his suit as he prepares for a full-body hose and scrub down.

It doesn't take long for the cattle to be herded in, one by one, and in no time I am face to face with a doctor who, in the allotted five minutes I have with him, tells me I have a flu but it's "probably not swine flu". That's because my temperature isn't at 39 degrees. I could be tested for swine flu, but it would cost me 4,000 baht and these days there doesn't seem to be much difference between the regular flu and the pig variety, he says. Try telling that to Khlong Toey taxi drivers.

"Get plenty of rest and come back if your temperature goes over 39," he says. I am then led to the cashier where I pay 900 baht and receive an exciting array of coloured pills in little plastic bags that could feed an Ethiopian family of four for a week.

This is the medical equivalent of the Brisbane Exhibition sample bags. And like those bags from my childhood, each little bag promises so much but ultimately delivers so little. "TAKE TWO EVERY SIX HOURS" one little packet sternly reads. When I open it, it is merely Tylenol. How disappointing. Imagine my excitement had it been Diazepam or Cerepax! Now you're talking, doctor!

With my medicinal sample bags I catch a cab home with a taxi driver who is wearing a mask. Is that because he picked me up from a hospital? When I get home, even my two beautiful Bang Phli dogs, Akradej and Noppamart, fail to jump all over me as they normally do. As I trudge up the stairs to my room, little do I know I'm going to remain in my house for four whole days, never once leaving my stately Samut Prakan manor until Friday.

I have exactly one visitor in those four days. His name is Wat, and my friend only visits because he's lost his job and is bored with futile job-hunting. Besides, he had the flu the week before so he's immune now. But that's it. Only Wat, and he is hardly an A-List friend.

I feel like Jennifer Lopez the week after Gigli was released, and this depression only compounds the flu. One of my closest friends, Neil, decides to tell everybody I have swine flu. Ha ha, very funny, you may as well brick up the door to my bedroom. I would have gone crazy from the solitude save for one small saving grace.

The week before I became sick I received seasons one and two of the old 1980s prime time soap opera Dynasty. I watch the whole lot in four days, and, tragically, I have now ordered season three from Amazon because I don't think my life will be fulfilled if I don't find out what happens to Fallon's baby. Nevertheless, for the rest of my life I will always associate Krystle and Alexis with lying sick in bed all alone for a week.

Well, I am better now, albeit a little bitter and twisted for the experience. Last night on my radio show I read the news that swine flu has a 0.8% mortality rate. In Thailand it is only 0.4%. In other words, out of every 200 or so people who catch the flu, one will die. My heart goes out to the families of the five people who have died in Thailand so far, but let's put this all into perspective. There ain't much difference between the normal flu and that of the swine variety. Surely my nightly dash across Rama 4 Road to catch a cab is potentially more injurious to my health than four days with the flu.

But nobody avoids me like the plague because I dash across Rama 4 Road. Nobody is repelled by my doing that - unless I cough, of course. But I am completely cured and feeling fit and strong.

I wish I could say the same for Wat - he has had a temperature of 39 degrees since his visit.

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