Edward seems to be over his initial symptoms (fever, aches and tiredness) however he's not himself yet, has an intermittent cough and has since yesterday developed a very croaky voice. He's still staying at home and still enjoying lots of rest in front of the TV (he doesn't normally get to watch it, so it's working well to keep him entertained).

As for the rest of us, Liz has some very mild flu symptoms (mostly aches and tiredness - but the tiredness could be due to lack of sleep!), I have mild cold symptoms (runny nose and slight cough) and Sophie seems unaffected.

Now the health update is done, I shall explain the title.

Last Wednesday afternoon Liz noticed that Edward's breathing was faster than it should be. We consistently measured it at 60 breaths per minute. We called our GP and spoke to the duty doctor. Their guidelines say that anything over 40 breaths per minute in a toddler is cause for concern, so they contacted a paediatrician at the hospital and arranged for us to pay a visit to A&E.

Despite the GPs assurances, when Edward and I arrived at A&E no one was expecting us, had any record of the arrangement or really knew what to do with us! After some minutes of fruitless phone calls they decided to put us in an isolation room while they worked out what to actually do. We got to spend the next three hours in that, rather bare, room.

They did manage to find a paediatrician to see us. They concluded that Edward's chest was fine, his ears were fine but he had a sore throat. She said that without the other case at his nursery she would diagnose him with a generic viral throat infection, not flu. However given the nursery case, it might still be flu.

She decided to swab Edward for swine flu. I got some pointers on how to detect distressed breathing and we were sent home with some child Tamiflu suspension (waiting for the Tamiflu took over an hour!).

Before Edward was swabbed we were expecting to just assume that he had swine flu based on the over-the-phone clinical diagnosis from our GP. However once he was swabbed we thought we would get to find out for sure. But apparently it's not that simple!

We have been in touch with both the hospital and our GP this week and no one seems to know what should be happening. The paediatrician said we would get a phone call within a few days if the result was positive. However having since spoken to the hospital, they said that was only the case before the HPA switched to the "treatment" phase (about 10 days ago). The hospital say they are now being sent some of the results for swabs they take, but they think GPs should get all of them. Our GP however isn't at all sure, all they can say for sure is that they haven't had Edward's result (yet).

So how long should these tests take at the moment? How are we supposed to get the results? Do we assume he didn't have swine flu because no one has called us? If it wasn't swine flu should we see a doctor again as he's now had an infection for over a week? What if they just wrote our phone number down wrong?