Med school's flu guide serves up ham on wry

The folks at one of the nation's top-ranked medical schools say it's OK to poke fun at the swine flu scare - as long as it gets young people to listen.

The Johns Hopkins University Office of Communications and Public Affairs recently created an "H1N1 Glossary for Students." It has terms like "pig" - a student with suspected swine flu. A "piglet" would be a freshman, a "pig" with fever sweats a "glazed ham."

"It is a way to catch the attention of students," said Tracey Reeves, a university spokeswoman.

The list came out of a meeting in which Reeves' boss sneezed into his sleeve and a colleague commented that it sounded like a "sleeze."

From there, staffers brainstormed other terms and circulated the glossary around campus. Officials at Johns Hopkins don't take the illness lightly; the university had 174 presumed cases of H1N1 as of late last week.

Reeves said people are sharing the list and her office is getting good responses. "And that's the point."

Some excerpts from the glossary:

• Pig in a blanket: A sick student complying with doctor's advice to stay home, drink fluids and get plenty of rest.
• Pig pen: A sick student's room, where he or she stays until 24 hours without fever, off of fever medication.
• Pig sty: A sick student's room before he or she properly disposes of used tissues and cleans doorknobs, desktops, keyboards and other surfaces with virus-killing wipes.
• The Farm: Mom and Dad's house, where pigs who live near campus go to recover rather than sit in the pig pen day after day.
• Sleeze: To sneeze properly (into one's sleeve) when a tissue isn't handy.
• Sloff: To cough properly (into one's sleeve) when a tissue isn't handy.
• Boar War: An all-out on-campus effort to prevent the spread of H1N1.
• Bacon: What a pig experiencing an H1N1 fever feels like, i.e., fried.
• Hog blog: A university's flu information Web site.
• Hog tide: Alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• Hogwash: Washing hands frequently and thoroughly, with either hog tide or plain old soap and water.
• Trough: A dining hall, where unsanitary pigs could easily transmit the H1N1 virus if they share drinks, utensils, etc.
• Pig puns: H1N1 jokes.

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com