Lono: I hope your mother is feeling better.

My family actually went through an incident of 'flu about 2-3 weeks ago here in CA. This was separate from a version of the cold virus that is also going around. Although it's speculative - I think that we probably had the swine 'flu. We were pretty lucky and no-one got the symptoms really seriously. In fact, to us it just seemed like another version of the 'flu. However, I fully understand that some folks are just more susceptible to any particular 'flu strain.

I had one version of the "normal" 'flu a few years ago while I was on business travel. The end result was that I found myself sitting on my bed at midnight in a strange hotel room - struggling very hard just to breathe. It's really not funny when you get into respiratory distress from one these 'flu bugs, and quite annoying when the front desk at the hotel won't even provide over-the-counter meds.

Nowadays I always carry some basic cold meds in my travel kit.

Pete