By Rosie Dillon

It started with a sore throat, cough, and fatigue. With whisperings of swine flu and the H1N1 virus itself hanging in the crisp November air at Haverford, I sat terrified in my room, enlisting passersby to feel my forehead. After a few days of lying low and periodically stopping by Health Services to take my temperature and watch sick people drool on the furniture, I decided I should submit myself to the nurse for examination. Though I insisted that I was simply suffering from a bad cold, some part of me was hoping I would be diagnosed with swine flu so that I could tell the heroic story of how I survived H1N1. More than that, I was hoping I would be diagnosed with swine flu so that I could spend seven days in bed watching "30 Rock."

At Health Services, the nurse listened attentively to my symptoms and my humanities major’s musings as to what might be at the root of my condition. She expertly shut me up by inserting a thermometer into my mouth. Suddenly, the nurse who I had been building a personal relationship with reduced me to a number: 99.5 degrees. A fever so slight, I believe it could be attributed to the toasty Health Services waiting room. Still, it was enough for the good people at Health Services, erring on the side of caution, to quarantine me.

I picked up my package of ramen noodles, saltines, and Gatorade and strapped on a surgical mask as instructed. I walked cheerfully back to my room, snapping cell phone pictures of myself on the way. When I got to my room, my head was pounding only slightly, so I popped a few ibuprofens and settled in to watch Desperate Housewives. This, I thought, was the life.

One complete season of "Desperate Housewives" later, I wondered what all my friends on “the outside” were doing. I wondered why my suitemates darted into their rooms when they saw me lumbering down the hall. I wondered how long I would have to stay in my room, and how to use the tiny paper thermometer Health Services had provided. I wondered why I had gone to Health Services in the first place, when it was clear that I only had a bad cold.

In the approximately 36 hours I spent in quarantine, I learned that my room is a truly boring place. My eyes were starting to hurt from watching TV on my computer, and no one would come close enough to me to tell me a proper bedtime story. Too sick to do school work but not sick enough to sleep all day, I lay alone in bed, feeling like the little kid who couldn’t go out and play with her friends. Or the hunchback of Notre Dame.

I now understand why the Centers for Disease Control advise against “Swine Flu Parties,” gatherings designed specifically to spread the flu virus. Aside from the disgusting image that springs to mind—“Pass the dip, and make sure to cough into it first”—being sick is no fun. But more importantly, being quarantined is not all it’s cracked up to be. Although being forced to sleep for 12 hours a day is a college student’s fantasy, feeling like death and being an outcast is a high price to pay for a little rest. Even post-quarantine, the stigma of being a condemned swine-person follows me. It’s been a week since I left quarantine, but some of my less in-the-know suitemates still stop me on my way out the door, asking if I should really be out of my room. I pay for their silence with cup noodles and continue on my way, pretending that I’m no different from the rest of Haverford. Deep down, I know that being quarantined has taken that normalcy away from me, and I’ll likely never get it back.

Dillon, a senior religion major, can be reached at rdillon@haverford.edu.

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