H1NWahhhh. What's a mother to do?

Before the Fall of '09, I was a pretty good mother with pretty good instincts.

I knew when to take my kid to the doctor and when to ride it out, when to send a sore throat to bed and when to take it in for a strep culture.

Then came the Great Swine Flu, and the ticking time bomb of deadly H1N1 microbes, gathering up supercharged energy to coat every pencil, every desk, every shared water bottle and the crook of every fourth-grade elbow that has ever risen to be coughed upon.

Somewhere in there, somewhere between my 12-year-old son's hacking cough and fever — which may or may not have constituted H1N1 — and a neighbor child's Swine Flu ankles hurting so bad she couldn't walk, I became paralyzed with fear. Somewhere between trying to remain rational and wanting to race my family to a bomb shelter every time I saw somebody sneeze, I lost my way as the calm voice of wisdom for my family. Somewhere between Momsagainstmercury.org's "Don't inoculate!" and the U.S. Center for Disease Control's "Do inoculate!" I became a bad mother.

Never mind instincts. The only body part not immobilized by confusion were my hands, flitting across the keyboard as I sought answers to the unanswerable: Should I risk mercury poisoning from the evil, conspiring, capitalistic government-sanctioned vaccination? Or do I risk being labeled an abusive parent by not inoculating my children against the dreaded illness? Should I send runny noses to school, that grubby American institution where Swine Flu is germinating faster than teenaged love? Or do I keep moderately sick kids home longer than usual, only to face backed-up homework and stronger H1N1 when they return? Should I believe that even the slightest temperature/cough is H1N1? Or do I assume my kids have H1N1 only if their ankles hurt?

Even my go-to health-care provider was overwhelmed, telling me instead of crowding her office or the emergency room with my son's potential H1N1, "Just assume his flu symptoms are Swine Flu and please go home and act accordingly." The mother of the girl with the aching ankles said her pediatrician wouldn't go near her child to test or treat her: The doc has an infant and an immune-compromised 4-year-old at home and didn't want to risk infection herself.

Just assume. Act accordingly. Please go home.

Then what?