posted on Aug, 12 2009 @ 10:08 PM
My name is Logan Smith. I work for 8 weeks a summer at Lake Aurora Christian Camp in Lake Wales, Florida.
The campus is seperated into three sections: Hillside, Lakeside, and the Neutral Zone. Hillside houses about 90 younger campers/counselors per week,
Lakeside houses about 130 campers/counselors per week, and the Neutral are the activites (swimming, archery, dining hall, ect.) The only time the
campuses have a chance to come into contact with something the other campus touched is at the dining hall, where they eat meals 35 minutes apart from
eachother.
High School Week, are most popular week for Lakeside, started horribly.
On the first day, I contracted something. Whatever it was, it was complicated by my Asthma. It knocked me off my feet by Sunday late-night and by
Monday morning I couldn't work. I couldn't get out of bed until Wednesday morning, and had very little energy the entire week.
While I was lout, all hell broke lose.
The infection started on Lakeside and was unstoppable. We sent home about 35 campers, but that didn't stop it. We quarantined over 10 campers who
couldn't get rides home, but that didn't stop it. The staff (like me) were ravished by the sickness and were incapable of working.
We began to takr the campers temperatures every morning to try to locate and quarantine individules with the sickness. This moderately worked.
The entire campus was falling apart. Except for Hillside.
With constant washing of hands, sanitization, and extra measures, we kept the sickess trapped on Lakeside. In the end, nearly EVERY camper was sick,
or went home and was sick the next day.
We all knew this was the Flu, but not what kiund. We did NOT want to jump to conclusions and start a panic by calling it the Swine Flu.
A couple of campers' parents called the camp the next week saying that they had their sons/daughters tested, and they had H1N1!
3 weeks later, I still have a cough from the sickness, mostly due to my asthma complicating it.
Here are pointers I learned:
*wash hands with soap and hot water
*avoid touching your face with your hands
*NEVER share drinks or foods
*try to avoid touching high-trafic objects (door handles, lighht switches, ect.)
*if you are sick, quarantine yourself!
*stay outdoors as much as possible
There's the story of how my workplace was brought to it's knees, but survived, the H1N1,\.