Anybody here ever been quarantined?

[pnwmom]

It happened to a girl in my class in elementary school -- she was quarantined for Scarlet Fever.

I remember adults being worried, but to the kids it seemed like a reasonable way to skip school.

[LawDeeDah]

1. I am quarantined to a degree because of my leftist humanist stances

and my lack of tact.
And It Is Good.

[silverweb]

9. Love it!

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Right there with ya, at least in terms of most of my family.

[LawDeeDah]

12. I will jot you as a kindred. :)

[silverweb]

13. Honored!

[LawDeeDah]

14. Me more so.

I don't make friends easily.

On purpose.

[Laffy Kat]

2. That's a complication of poorly managed Strep. You don't see it much nowadays.

I have a vague memory of measles quarantines as a child.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Yes, I was, a long time ago, and for Scarlet Fever as well.

This was in the late 1940's and I had just entered the 3rd grade. The authorities had wanted to hospitalize me, but there were no beds.

So we all stayed home, my folks and my brother and I.

I got a PCN shot which hurt, as did my brother.

And we stayed in. I was out of school for two weeks and was quite glad to go back.

Staying home was boring!

[pnwmom]

4. I remember seeing my classmate playing in her yard and it looked like fun to me!

I think a sibling was the real patient, but the whole family had to be quarantined. Antibiotics were being used for strep by then, so I don't know how this case got through. It was the only time I remember anybody being quarantined.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. We lived in a cluster of little houses, and the yards were all in common.

I had to stay indoors!



Penicillin was new then.

[JustAnotherGen]

26. This is interesting - great piece of history

My dad had shared with us that his school shut down in the second grade due to a polio outbreak.

How lucky many of us are born in the latter half of the 20th century.

Thanks for sharing!

[Roselma]

6. Yes...I grew up in the 50's and 60's.

During a measles outbreak, one of my brothers got the measles, and the health department "quarantined" our whole family. The rest of us (the other 5 siblings) all began to show symptoms of measles at the same time. The country where I grew up actually came to our house and placed Quarantine signs on our doors. It wasn't a bad quarantine except that we were sick - not particularly suffering. We did not have a television back then, so we sat around playing board games and cards. The health department had to approve our return to school.

[RKP5637]

28. I remember that too as a little kid waaayyy back. A couple of the houses down the street had

quarantine signs on them. As I recall they were sort of orangeish red with black lettering, were posted on the front door. My parents said it was because they were sick and it was just to prevent someone from going in and catching it too. It all made sense to me. I think it was for scarlet fever, maybe measles ... but I had measles too and I don't remember a sign on our house, maybe there was and I was too little to notice it, of course I would have been inside anyway.

[Violet_Crumble]

7. Yeah, during the Swine Flu outbreak a few years ago...

I had to spend five days at home because someone at work rang up the health department and told them he'd been in contact with someone who had it and then been in contact with a bunch of us at work. So I get a phone call from the health people on a Sunday night telling me I was being quarantined, except it was okay for me to go to the doctor and get the stuff they were giving everyone who had it or was at high risk of getting it. Being told you have to stay at home isn't much fun, and it didn't feel like a holiday even though work paid for the time off...

[pnwmom]

10. I remember getting the vaccine for Swine Flu during the height of the fears,

and then in my city there were suddenly several cases of Guillian Barre syndrome, caused by the vaccine. That was a little unnerving.

[gvstn]

8. My mom tells stories.

She says it was common practice for the authorities to nail a notice to your door that a particular house was quarantined because of a measles or similar infection in the neighborhood and you had to stay indoors until it was controlled. I'm not sure of the particulars but I can believe it since she was born around 1935 and polio was still a real threat to communities. Without penicillin or vaccines, I'm sure outbreaks of disease were very scary for young mothers wanting to protect their children.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Yes. Our whole platoon was quarantined after we went to ITR for Spinal Meningitis.

A couple of our guys came down with it when we were in boot camp. So, we were isolated away from the rest of the company and had daily doses of Sulpha drugs.

[pnwmom]

15. So glad you were okay.

My uncle was drafted and sent to a boot camp where they had already had cases of meningitis (pre antibiotics era). He died a few days after being inducted.

My grandparents could never forgive whoever it was that decided to bring healthy young men into a camp that was already infected with meningitis.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. I don't recall what happened to the 2 guys who came down with it.

None of us did. And, being young and dumb, we didn't know how serious it was.

[Hekate]

17. Yes. Exposure to Typhoid Fever. We didn't know what Auntie was sick with when we left...

...Colorado after spending the summer at Grandma's mountain cabin, but she was diagnosed after she finally went to the hospital in Denver. We were tracked across 3 states before the news caught up with us at another relative's in California. When we arrived at our own home in the San Fernando Valley it was with quarantine instructions. The next day the Board of Health put a red-letter Quarantine sign on the front door. We were visited by medical personnel, who interviewed my parents and did blood draws on all of us except my 2 y.o. sister, who became utterly hysterical at the sight of the large needles. It was decided that if any of the rest of us tested positive, she would be taken to the hospital for her blood draw. We all had to provide stool samples over the next week.

I don't know how long it lasted, but none of us tested positive for typhoid, which my mother attributed to Aunt Charlotte's obsessive hand washing in the kitchen. Charlotte was extremely sick, but recovered.

Done right, the judicious use of quarantines makes good public health sense. But doing it right would be the key. I wonder if the fact that we are so used to antibiotics fixing whatever ails us in a hurry has caused us to forget some of the basics....

[cwydro]

18. I had German Measles at 6

Wasn't allowed to go anywhere.

Never even hear of that disease anymore.

[pnwmom]

19. "German Measles" is covered in the MMR vaccines these days. That's why

we don't hear about it anymore.

I got it, too, but they didn't officially quarantine people for it -- nor for the other childhood diseases I got (mumps and measles).

[cwydro]

20. Yeah, this was the 60's lol

I remember shots for the other measles( we called it red measles).

But my sis got that. And a neighbor got mumps. Remember my parents terror during those days.

[RKP5637]

29. Yep, I remember when I was young that was pretty common, also mumps. I had

both. I also had a horrible case of chicken pox. I still remember to this day one spot that was really really bad on my side. I also had shingles way back. I got the vaccine for that recently, I never want to repeat that again!

[Thirties Child]

21. I was quarantined in the first grade

My sister was diagnosed with scarlet fever and I was taken out of class and sent home. They burned my books, wouldn't allow my father to come home, left groceries on the back porch. My poor mother - a new baby and a sick three-year-old. This was 1941, so no television.

[pnwmom]

23. Your poor mother! What a nightmare. Glad you all survived it. n/t

[cwydro]

24. Yikes! nt

[longship]

22. Infectious hepatitis, 1967, Michigan State University.

Over 50 cases spread throughout the 40,000 student campus. I was unlucky to live at a dorm where it was active.

BTW, gamma globulin shots are as painful as they say. Two within 24 hours and one cannot lay down on ones back. Pretty bad when one spends the next five weeks in isolation at the university health center.

A Hep diet sucks. I had a friend sneak in Big Boy hamburgers on many nights. When the nurses discovered the evidence they chewed me out. My response was, than give me food that tastes better than paper. They didn't. It was a horrible five weeks. And I lost my university education until years later.

Yup. Quarantines suck.

[RazzleCat]

25. Yep in August of this year

I was on vacation and felt very ill. Went to the emergency room had c-diff in "full shed". I was placed in a private room and not allowed to leave for 5 days, worst vacation ever. My husband could visit so long as he was gowned prior to entry but no touching. Not an extreme quarantine, but I was not allowed to leave my room at all. All equipment and tests came into me and all medical personal had to "suit up" prior to entry. I was not in a super lock down quarantine, but no way was I allowed to leave prior to their determination that I was "safe", I also had the feeling that they could ramp up my seclusion if I was in some way not following the rules they told me to follow.

[pnwmom]

30. Scary! Glad you got through that and it was only 5 days. n/t

[JustAnotherGen]

27. Not quarantined

But sent home my Sophomore year of university due to mono. The call from the health center:

Do you have a car? No? Stay in your room - we are calling your parents.

I was a Resident Assistant - so they had to disinfect that office, the laundry room, fountains, bathrooms, pool room, stairwells, etc etc. I had been on round duty the night before so I had been everywhere in the building. In the early 90's it was that and meningitis that would have outbreaks on college campuses.

[murray hill farm]

31. Yes! I had scarlet fever when I was a kid.

it was the mid 1940's...and we had the sign on the door. My mother was the only one allowed in the room to take care of me. This was before antibiotics, but I think I was given some Sulfa meds. My mom had been quarantined when she was a child with three other children when she was a child. My mom did not develop the disease, but was quarantined with the children. Both the other children died of scarlet fever. So, she spent most of the time caring for me and trying not to cry.....thinking I would die like her friends from her childhood. I was so sick though that I wasn't too aware of anything going on around me. I think the situation now with this present threat is pretty much the same as it was with Scarlet Fever and Polio of the 1940's in that there is no cure as yet to protect us and we all know that the only treatment is just to treat the symptoms...and most often not to successfully.