WHERE TO GO WHEN YOU OR LOVED ONE GETS SICK OVER HOLIDAY

Oh, you better not sneeze, you better not cough

It's Christmas Day and the doctor is off

Colds and flu are coming to town.

Why is it you can feel great all week but start hacking, wheezing and running a fever the minute the doctor's office closes for a long holiday weekend?

While illness may not hit every family every year at Christmas, most people have a least a few stories about holidays spent in bed or, worse, in the emergency room.

Especially when holidays fall during a weekend, as Christmas does this year, the number of patients treated in hospital urgent care facilities tends to go up, said John Taylor, a flight nurse at Southeast Missouri Hospital.

Southeast's Minor Care and St. Francis Medical Center's Convenient Care, along with both hospitals' emergency rooms, are one of the few clinics open today and the only place to be treated by a health care provider on Christmas Day. All are open every day of the year, with the emergency rooms and Minor Care open 24-hours per day and Convenient Care's hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Paul Mackey, a family nurse practitioner at Convenient Care, said the load is usually increased at this time of year anyway because people are inside more and pass around germs more during the winter.

He said this week Convenient Care has been seeing about 45 patients a day with the "Swampeast Missouri crud" -- a colorful term for the cough/sore throat/runny nose/body aches syndrome brought on by the many viral, bacterial, strep and sinus infections that proliferate at this time of year.

Charlotte Craig, director of the Cape Girardeau County Health Department, said this year there are actually fewer sick people than last year according to a survey of hospitals, doctors offices, schools and day cares the department conducts each week.

Still, the report shows substantial numbers of cases of diarrhea/vomiting, upper respiratory infections, bronchitis, flu-like symptoms and sore throats.

If you or a family member start feeling ill, the first thing to ask yourself is if it's something you can treat at home, Taylor said.

"A lot of people come to the emergency room for things they could take care of themselves. Maybe they threw up once or they have a slight cough," Taylor said.

There are many over-the-counter medications that can be taken for minor illnesses, such as decongestant for a stuffy nose, antihistamine for allergy symptoms, cough syrup for coughs and ibuprofen or acetaminophen for aches and low-grade fever.

Symptoms that may indicate something more serious than a sniffle, Taylor said, are temperature of 102 or more, a temperature that doesn't respond to ibuprofen or acetaminophen, violent coughing, persistent sore throat or difficulty breathing. However, Mackey said, there are no hard rules about what may be serious and what's not.

"My rule of thumb is if you or your child has something you don't feel comfortable about, you should seek treatment," Mackey said. The first step in seeking treatment should be calling your regular physician, Taylor said.

"Most doctors are either on call themselves or have an associate on call. They can tell you whether or not something is serious and perhaps save you a hospital bill," Taylor said.

Those who need to see a health care provider on evenings, holidays, weekends or other times the family physician is not available can go to the emergency room of either hospital. At each, patients describe symptoms to a triage nurse who decides if the best place for the patient is the clinic-like setting of Convenient Care or Minor Care or the emergency services department.

Generally, patients who can be treated with a brief workup and few lab tests are sent to Convenient Care or Minor Care. This might include sore throat, coughing (as long as the patient isn't wheezing), earaches, minor burns and minor injuries, Taylor said.

Those with more symptoms or who require several tests are usually sent to the emergency room, he said. Of course, ideally, you want to be healthy for Christmas. Taylor said there are two practices that can keep you that way: good hand washing and proper food handling.

"When someone covers his mouth to sneeze or cough, then germs get on his hands and those germs get on everything he touches," Taylor said. To keep those germs from being passed around, it's important for those who feel ill to wash their hands often to keep from spreading germs and those who are healthy to wash their hands often .