Swine Flu (H1N1 flu)

Symptoms

Swine flu signs and symptoms in humans are similar to those of other flu strains:

·         Fever

·         Cough

·         Sore throat

·         Runny or stuffy nose

·         Body aches

·         Headache

·         Chills

·         Fatigue

·         Diarrhea

·         Vomiting

Swine flu symptoms develop about one to three days after you're exposed to the virus and continue for about seven days.

When to see a doctor

It's not necessary to see a doctor if you're generally healthy and develop flu signs and symptoms, such as fever, cough and body aches. Call your doctor, however, if you have flu symptoms and you're pregnant or you have a chronic disease, such as emphysema or a heart condition.

Causes

Influenza viruses infect the cells lining your nose, throat and lungs. The virus enters your body when you inhale contaminated droplets or transfer live virus from a contaminated surface to your eyes, nose or mouth.

You can't catch swine flu from eating pork.

Risk factors

If you've traveled to an area where many people are affected by swine flu (H1N1 flu), you may have been exposed to the virus, particularly if you spent time in large crowds.

Swine farmers and veterinarians have the highest risk of true swine flu because of their exposure to pigs.

 

Complications

Influenza complications include:

·         Worsening of chronic conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and asthma

·         Pneumonia

·         Neurological signs and symptoms, ranging from confusion to seizures

·         Respiratory failure

Treatments and drugs

Most cases of flu, including H1N1 flu, require only symptom relief. If you have a chronic respiratory disease, your doctor may prescribe additional medication to help relieve your symptoms.

The antiviral drugs oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) are sometimes prescribed to reduce the severity of symptoms, but flu viruses can develop resistance to them. Some researchers recommend further study on both of these drugs due to uncertainty about their effects beyond the initial reduction in symptoms.

To make development of resistance less likely and maintain supplies of these drugs for those who need them most, antivirals are reserved for people at high risk of complications.

High-risk groups are those who:

·         Are hospitalized

·         Are younger than 5 years of age, particularly children younger than 2 years

·         Are 65 years and older

·         Are pregnant or within two weeks of delivery, including women who have had pregnancy loss

·         Are younger than 19 years of age and are receiving long-term aspirin therapy, because of an increased risk for Reye's syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal disease

·         Have certain chronic medical conditions, including asthma, emphysema, heart disease, diabetes, neuromuscular disease, obesity, and kidney, liver or blood disease

·         Are immunosuppressed due to certain medications or HIV

Lifestyle and home remedies

If you develop any type of flu, these measures may help ease your symptoms:

·         Drink plenty of liquids. Choose water, juice and warm soups to prevent dehydration. Drink enough so that your urine is clear or pale yellow.

·         Rest. Get more sleep to help your immune system fight infection.

·         Consider pain relievers. Use an over-the-counter pain reliever, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol, others) or ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others), cautiously. Also, use caution when giving aspirin to children or teenagers.

Though aspirin is approved for use in children older than age 3, children and teenagers recovering from chickenpox or flu-like symptoms should never take aspirin. This is because aspirin has been linked to Reye's syndrome, a rare but potentially life-threatening condition, in such children.

Remember, pain relievers may make you more comfortable, but they won't make your symptoms go away faster and may have side effects. Ibuprofen may cause stomach pain, bleeding and ulcers. If taken for a long period or in higher than recommended doses, acetaminophen can be toxic to your liver.

Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends flu vaccination for all people older than 6 months of age. An H1N1 virus is one component of the seasonal flu shot for 2013-2014. The flu shot also protects against two or three other influenza viruses that are expected to be the most common during the 2013-2014 flu season.

The vaccine will be available as an injection or a nasal spray. The nasal spray is approved for use in healthy people 2 through 49 years of age who are not pregnant.

These measures also help prevent swine flu (H1N1 flu) and limit its spread:

·         Stay home if you're sick. If you do have swine flu (H1N1 flu), you can give it to others starting about 24 hours before you develop symptoms and ending about seven days later.

·         Wash your hands thoroughly and frequently. Use soap and water, or if they're unavailable, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Flu viruses can survive for two hours or longer on surfaces, such as doorknobs and countertops.

·         Contain your coughs and sneezes. Cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough. To avoid contaminating your hands, cough or sneeze into a tissue or the inner crook of your elbow.

·         Avoid contact. Stay away from crowds if possible. And if you're at high risk of complications from the flu — for example, you're younger than 5 or you're 65 or older, you're pregnant, or you have a chronic medical condition such as asthma — consider avoiding swine barns at seasonal fairs and elsewhere.

·         Reduce exposure within your household. If a member of your household has swine flu, designate only one household member to be responsible for the ill person's personal care.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.org/

A Future Vision

"We must all be concerned for the future because the future is where we shall all spend the rest of our lives."

So, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, we need to have a vision for our future because the future is all we have. The success of our vision will often be determined by our impact for good on those around us. Our visions will be many and varied. Some will be awe inspiring and be played out on the world stage. Yet others will be followed through by ordinary people, like you and me in each locality around this Earth of ours. Every vision is no less important than the next because it gives meaning and direction to our lives.

Dr. Frankl, a survivor of the holocaust, made an interesting observation in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning" when he wrote:

"It is the peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future"

Later he notes:

"Woe is him who sees no more sense in life
No purpose and therefore no sense in carrying on
He is soon lost."

Frankl, an Austrian Jew and psychiatrist, was incarcerated in a German concentration camp during World War Two. There he began to study how some prisoners were able to cope with life in the camps while others could not. Only one in twenty survived in places like Auschwitz. What he found was that prisoners with a sense of purpose or with something to live for or with goals lived much longer than those without purpose.

So what he did was to set out to give every prisoner a reason to survive or something to live for. He began spreading rumours. He would say "The allies have had a victory. They'll be here by Christmas. Pass the word around to others but do it secretly". This gave the prisoners a reason to hold on.

On another front, he encouraged every Jew to study their tormentors. He asked them to commit to memory their tormentors every movement, their mannerisms and any special distinguishing marks, anything to help recognise them after the war.

So when the war was over, the Jews could search out and find those who committed these terrible crimes against the Jewish race and bring them to justice swiftly. He gave them a reason to live. "Let's get the bastards" became their vision of vengeance for the future.

In a different way, Martin Luther King had a vision to change the world for the better. He gave his life for his vision of a future with racial equality. His vision is so aptly summed up in his now famous "I have a dream" speech delivered before one hundred thousand people on the steps of the Lincoln Monument during the 1960's. some of the words of the speech went something like this:

"I have a dream that my four children will one day live
In a nation where they will not be judged by the colour
Of their skin but by the content of their character."

A noble vision for the future but one put in words of a very personal nature.

To have a vision for the future which we can achieve we must immerse ourselves in it totally. Jesus Christ put it in this way.

"If you want to find life, you must first lose it."

What Christ was talking about was losing yourself in something bigger and greater than yourself. When you do this, you'll discover just how broad, deep, and magnificent life can be. Why else do you think Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King could continue with their visions for the future despite all the odds against them? They felt fulfilled by their so called "sacrifices" that their contributions made to the lives of others.

Each of us has within us the power to make a worthy contribution to the lives of others. Not all of us will or can reach the pinnacles of Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King. However, we must stay oblivious to the immense capability within ourselves. Whatever we want to do, can be done if we believe strongly enough in it.

Terry Fox was a perfect example of this. Here was a young man who had lost his leg to cancer. He wanted to show other cancer sufferers that they, too, could still have a full and rewarding life. So he set out to run across Canada on his artificial leg to raise one million dollars for cancer research. Despite dying on his run he raised twenty four million dollars. Today, around the world, his epic run is celebrated annually with Terry Fox Fun Runs which continue to raise funds for cancer research and give others the inspiration to live their lives to the full. Terry's vision for his life after cancer took his leg was to be thoroughly used up when he died.

On a personal front, I find that life is always exciting when I have a vision for the future. When there are no immediate goals in sight, life seems unrewarding. I need a constant vision of where I want to go.

Louise May Alcott of "Little Women" fame captures that feeling for me in these words:

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations
I may not reach them.
But I can look up and see their beauty;
Believe in them;
And try to follow where they lead."

Let us all have our own vision for the future and seek to achieve that vision. Remember it is the journey that is exciting and rewarding-not the arriving. Let us not allow the following epitaph to be written on our tombstone.

"He slept beneath the moon;
He baked beneath the sun;
He lived the life of going to do
And died with nothing done."

Instead, let it be that:

"We made a vision for our lives.
We created our goals.
We took our opportunities.
We made decisions.
We took action.
And we died happy in the knowledge
That we did it our way."

Our author spent 10 years as a member of a public speaking club called Rostrum in Australia where he learnt the art of public speaking. He loved to write and perform motivational speeches as he needed in everyday life to inspire students in his Maths classes and students in his sporting teams to work hard to achieve the best possible results. Rostrum like other public speaking organisations (e. g. Toastmasters), are great training grounds for those who need to speak well in public. Rostrum's web site is http://www.rostrum.com.au. http://www.toastmasters.org.au. is the web site for Toastmasters.

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The Journey of the Creative Mind

Art looks like a destination. Art looks like a journey. Art looks like both. There are many physical processes involved in the creation of art. The eyes, the hands, and body movements combine to develop what can be called 'technique'. Technique is connected to the non-physical world of the mind. What are we thinking when we create? That is considering the premise that we need to be actively thinking in order to exist according to René Descartes' "je pense, donc je sues" (I think, therefore I am). What are we feeling? Considering that we are also emotional beings and feelings are our connection to a physical world. What are the antecedents that provoke those things? That is accepting that we are influenced by something or someone triggering thoughts, feelings or ideas that are now materializing in our art. Are there 'energies' outside the physical brain motivating creativity? That is the concept of the ancient Greeks' muses and the conception that inspiration comes from outside of us.

Humans are always trying to explain abstract ideas in a 'concrete' manner even though language itself is an abstraction. Moreover, I believe writing is not a way of making the idea concrete but a visual way to make it abstract. The idea becomes a sound and the sound received visual symbols we call 'letters' which consequently forms an alphabet. We form words with them providing a visualization of the idea. Cognitive psychology attempts to explain this phenomena. In instructional design we pay attention to learning concepts that help us design learning activities. Concepts as making sense, consciousness, perception, reflection, intention, action, and so on. Psychoanalysis, made famous by Sigmund Freud, explores what I am going to call 'the dark side of the moon'. In psychoanalysis the focus is on what happens in a conscious state but in the unconscious mind. Concepts like subliminal messages, dreams, suppressed memories, instincts, and other factors that connects us to the conscious world with an unconscious root. Think of Salvador Dalí and surrealism.

We can try to explain or map the journey of the creative mind and we will always fall short of explaining its full 'reality'. We can take a piece of art as a destination and trace back the steps to the beginning of time in an attempt to explain creativity by its result. I will argue that the artwork is not the result or the destination of the creative mind more mostly a souvenir from the trip like that card, t-shirt, or the famous coffee mug we get as a memory. Creativity is much more powerful than its result. There might be more happening in the subconscious mind than what is happening in the conscious mind when art is created. The journey of the creative mind is not to be fully explained or understood but to be enjoyed and experienced. It is what we talk about to entertain ourselves with the possibilities and not to prove a point. We just enjoy the trip, the memories, and the souvenirs.
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