PARKER — An airline baggage handler at Denver International Airport who had never heard of the swine flu, thought he had caught a cold after playing the slot machines in Central City on Saturday morning.
By Saturday night, he had a fever and terrible headache and was sweating, sick to his stomach and in pain every time he breathed.
“It was the worst flu I’ve ever had in my life,” said the United Airlines employee, who didn’t want this name used for privacy reasons. “It was rapid. The speed of it got me. It hit me so damn fast it wasn’t even funny.”
The 44-year-old man was one of two cases of H1N1 flu confirmed in Colorado on Thursday. The other is a woman in her 30s from Arapahoe County who recently returned from a cruise in Mexico. She had also spent a few days in San Diego.
The night of April 24, a Friday, the Parker man, his wife, his children and his brother-in-law ate at a restaurant in Parker. Saturday morning, they drove up to Central City, where they gambled in several casinos.
He’s not sure how he contracted the H1N1 virus.
“It could have been somebody was sick at Central City that I never knew, came in behind them and played a game or walked through the air as he or she sneezed. You just don’t know,” he said.
He felt fine before dinner Saturday, but then the flu hit him so hard that night, his wife took him to the emergency room at Parker Adventist Hospital.
Doctors there drew blood and tested him for influenza A. When it came back positive, he says they quarantined him for four days while they took more blood samples, pumped him full of antibiotics, in case he had pneumonia, and sent his lab results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
He got sicker and sicker.
“I was just so achy. Every time you move something, it’s like you’re picking up a thousand pounds and it’s like, ‘God, my body is just stiff and sore,’ ” he said.
His wife stayed with him while doctors kept testing him and giving him more medicine. Despite the pain, the man never thought he was going to die.
“I’m too ornery for that,” he said.
He doesn’t think he picked up the flu at DIA. The baggage handler has been moving luggage on and off United airplanes for 11 years on Concourse B, which is the domestic concourse. International flights arrive at Concourse A.
“I wasn’t anywhere near anybody, and I’d been healthy the whole week,” he said.
He worked all last week but took off April 24 to spend time with his brother-in-law, who was in town for a visit.
No one else in his family has contracted the flu.
Doctors confirmed that he had the swine-flu virus Thursday morning. They let him go home Thursday afternoon after his vital signs were healthy.
He and his wife are still taking antibiotics, and he’s been ordered to rest until Monday. He’s newly married and has two stepchildren and a 9-month-old son.
“When I got home, I put the mask on and I grabbed my son,” he said. “Once I did that, I was fine.”
