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QUINCY, IL --  It's not often that we journalists become the news, but that's what happened on a local level last week.

You'll recall that Adams County had 5 suspected cases of H1N1 last week.

All of those cases came back negative late on Friday.

As it turns out, KHQA's Rajah Maples was one of those suspected cases.

She thought she'd share her experience to hopefully educate the public about the process.

Rajah tested positive for Influenza strain A last Wednesday.

That very day, her doctor took another culture and sent it to the Adams County Health Department, which then sent it on to the state for possible H1N1 testing.

Her test, along with the four others, came back negative within 48 hours.

Rajah merely had the seasonal flu, which I didn't realize could hit this late in the season.

Earlier on KHQA's News at 5, Executive News Director Carol Sowers talked with a panel of experts about the H1N1 virus.

She asked how can you tell the difference between having merely the seasonal flu vs. H1N1.

Dr. Richard Saalborn says, "I think it's very difficult to tell the difference between the two. I think you have to go back to what the exposure of the individual was and if they had just traveled to Mexico. If they had been maybe on an airplane where there was a confined environment. I think you have to take the exposure into the symptoms the patient has."

Nancy Bluhm with the Adams County Health Department told us last week was chaotic. She says while people shouldn't worry, we also shouldn't let our guard down.

Bluhm says, "at this point, we don't have any cases in Adams County. We don't have any specimens in the pipeline. But we're not that far away from where these cases are clustering, so it wouldn't take much for a case to come to our community."