Nina Baumler, 30, was born and brought up in the North-East.

She now lives in the US and has recently returned from her holiday home in Mexico.

Here she writes about how it feels living so close to the epicentre of the swine flu outbreak.

OVER the past week, I have had a steady trickle of calls and emails from friends and family in the UK “just checking”

that I haven’t fallen victim to the dreaded swine flu.

I have been living in the US for the past two years, but recently spent two months in Mexico, where my husband and I have been renovating our holiday home in Mazatlan, on Mexico’s Gold Coast.

When I flew back to San Francisco two weeks ago, I had never even heard of swine flu – well, who had?

Now it’s the number one topic of conversation. Keeping track of the new cases is becoming addictive. Every time I check my email, I sneak a look to see if the virus is getting closer to me, my husband, John, and our dog.

On Wednesday, we heard that two cases had been confirmed in the next county to us.

Listening to the radio, watching the news channels, it feels like it is closing in.

On Monday, shortly after listening to a radio phone-in about the swine flu outbreak, my husband and I started sniffling.

I bundled us into bed, stuck a thermometer under my tongue and started checking our symptoms on the internet.

Even though it had been more than a week since I had returned from Mexico – and therefore highly unlikely that I had brought swine flu back with me – I couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious.

A quick check reassured me that we had common cold symptoms rather than something more sinister.

Regardless, I’ve been checking my temperature compulsively and I have not left the house for the past two days.

Under normal circumstances this would seem like skiving, but I am telling myself it is more like a public service.

Those sensationalist news reports have clearly got to me more than I had realised.

With the media frenzy, it’s hard to know whether to be really worried or not. Americans do have a tendency to over-dramatise most things, but, on the other hand, this whole thing is a bit scary.

To Britons, Mexico may seem like a far-away, slightly scary-sounding place, but Americans see Mexico in the same way we see Spain – somewhere hot to go on your holidays, where the food’s better and cheaper than at home.

To live so close to the epicentre of this outbreak is understandably “freaking out”

much of the American public.

So far, there have been no recorded cases of swine flu in Mazatlan and I am still planning on driving down there at the beginning of June, barring a flu pandemic of apocalyptic proportions.

By that time, I expect we will know one way or another how serious this thing is. I have my surgical mask at the ready – just in case.