A flu nightmare, without swine flu

Flu fears in Latin America turned Pete Sukosky's benign case of pink eye into a travel story from hell.

Worried that he represented the first flu case in Panama, he said, authorities alternately handcuffed him, denied him phone calls, and paraded him in front of reporters. "Homesick gringo escapes hospital," one headline screamed.

He turned out to be negative.

Sukosky is a seasoned traveler, fluent in Spanish, and served in the Peace Corps in Honduras.

"I think I was a victim of this sort of hysteria that has been sowed about swine flu," he said yesterday, back on the job as a drug-company sales representative in South Jersey. "Honestly, I love Panama City."

He also concedes having played some role in what happened - leaving the hospital (hence the headline) and kicking a table (hence the handcuffs), both out of fear and frustration.

Swine flu was inciting fears worldwide on April 29 when Sukosky arrived in Panama after a week's vacation with friends in the Colombian coastal city of Cartagena.

In Philadelphia, the story of a traveler en route from Mexico to Canada had led newscasts two nights before when she arrived at the airport here with flulike symptoms. The woman was later found not to have influenza A (H1N1). In Panama City, many people at the airport were wearing masks.

After spending the night, Sukosky, 32, woke up with the swelling and redness of conjunctivitis.

"I showed up at the ticket counter, and when I took off my sunglasses [the agent] said, 'You look terrible.' " He was directed to an airport clinic, where drops were put in his eyes. The clinic told him that he could get more medication at Santo Tomas Hospital, a major public hospital.

There, he paid the $2 fee to be examined and get eyedrops.

"First they were asking me where I had come from, I had a sore throat - I had been smoking Cuban cigars - and then all of a sudden they wanted to do a swab test," said Sukosky, who lives in Maple Shade.

They told him that swine flu had been confirmed in New Jersey.

He waited six hours for results that he'd been told would take 30 minutes, went out to eat, and was called at his hotel to return to the hospital, where he waited two or three hours more.

"Finally a doctor comes in and says you tested positive for influenza A" - the broad category that includes many seasonal flus and H1N1 - "and you have to stay overnight" for a definitive test, Sukosky said.

When he saw a nurse locking a nearby door and pocketing a key, he left again for his hotel. "I knew I wasn't sick," he said. "I was a little bit scared. I truly thought they might just be playing with me for being an American."

The health authorities - clad in scrubs, masks, and goggles - military and police showed up in the morning, along with reporters and cameramen.

"The first thing I said is, 'I'll go, but I want to call my family in the States,' " Sukosky said, but he said he was told he could not.

When the military blocked a public phone at the hospital, preventing him from calling the U.S. Embassy, he got angry. "I was raising my voice, but essentially it was fear."

He kicked a table. Glass vials fell. Handcuffs came out, and he was taken through admissions in the front of the hospital, where "every patient covered their mouth and took off running," Sukosky said, an event that he believes was staged for the news media.

He was eventually allowed to use a phone. He called his mother in Avondale, Chester County, who called the U.S. State Department.

He was given what he believes was Ativan, an antianxiety drug, and was out for the night.

Embassy officials were en route to the hospital, responding to the Panamanian government's report of an American with swine flu, when they got the message that his mother was seeking their help, he said.

Asked by a reporter about the case, the State Department declined to release details, citing patient confidentiality. A spokesman did confirm that an official who Sukosky said visited him at the hospital works in the embassy.

Hospital officials could not be reached.

The definitive test for H1N1 came back negative, and Sukosky was released. He arrived home May 5.

In his last hours at Santo Tomas Hospital, Sukosky was able to talk at length with the medical staff and a police officer about his frustrations, especially the denied phone calls. "In the end I think they were pretty sympathetic," he said, and understood that "I was far from home and I had a family that was worrying about me."

He still loves Panama.

Would he do anything differently?

"I would definitely enable my cell phone to work overseas," he said, rather than depending on access to a public phone. "And I would definitely have the phone numbers for the embassy as well."

"There was a lot of hype about swine flu," he said. "I just got caught up in it."