The patient kept her distance from the stream of visitors to her ministerial office, no kisses, handshakes or hongis - Mrs Turia's doctor is apparently sure it is ordinary flu.
Mrs Turia is a woman driven because she knows she is leaving Parliament at the next election and she wants to achieve as much as possible before then.
By this time next year, Bill English's second and most important Budget for the Maori Party this term should have been passed.
If all goes well, that Budget will contain a huge policy gain - funding of perhaps more than $1 billion for the Maori Party's whanau ora policy.
Mrs Turia described it in a speech this week as "one of the most ground-breaking projects I have ever taken on".
It will bring together funding from various Government departments - health, education, justice, housing, social welfare - to fund a new approach to service delivery.
Last Saturday, as the other parties battled it out for Mt Albert, Mrs Turia marked the Maori Party's fifth birthday by announcing the task force that will come up with the detailed policy design to help get Government approval, including Prof Mason Durie and economist Suzanne Snively.
Roughly modelled on John Tamihere's Waipareira Trust, it would allow a holistic and co-ordinated approach by private providers to families in need of state assistance - instead of having various departments working in silo fashion.
Mr Tamihere, who was once at loggerheads with Mrs Turia when they were in the Labour caucus, has been helping the Maori Party in the development of the policy.
Mrs Turia describes it as a way for Maori to restore their own rangatiratanga instead of being paralysed by state-created dependency.
It sounds good even if it is not yet clear how it would work.
The Maori Party has had very little resistance to its ideas since signing up as a support partner to National.
But since then it has announced a growing collection of policies that could at the very least be described as race-based, from a Maori bank, to Maori prisons, to free access for Maori to university, to Maori seats on the [new] Auckland Council.
Three years ago, there would have been three parties, National, Act and New Zealand First, leaping into issues of separatism.
Now, National, in government, is encouraging the development of such policies.
It contents itself that middle New Zealand will see the sense in trying something new to get better outcomes in health, education and crime on the basis that past policies surely haven't achieved it.
Consequently, little thought has been given by National or the Maori Party to the political management of any growing disquiet because no such disquiet has been publicly evident, at least in the political arena.
Act is the wild card.
It has been circumspect in this Parliament, but it has been as vociferous as National in separatist politics.
And it is Act, not National, that is the obstacle to establishing Maori seats on the Auckland Council.
The special select committee hearing submissions on the super city plan has formed a separate committee to hear submissions on the Maori seats - because of the sheer number of submissions.
National's Tau Henare, in the chair, will be joined by his colleague Simon Bridges, Labour's Shane Jones and the Maori Party's Hone Harawira.
Any compromise will have to win the support of Act if National is to avoid an embarrassing standoff with the minister promoting the supercity legislation, Act leader Rodney Hide.
Mr Hide himself might be taking a strategic stand against the Maori seats for electoral purposes - his opposition is a far cry from his offer last year to support entrenchment of the Maori seats on the basis that what was good for the general seats was good for the Maori seats.
National has already been softened for some sort of compromise, as difficult as that might be to broker.
Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples spoke at National's northern regional conference two weeks ago.
He was warmly received as he talked about the quality of the relationship with National based on respect.
Dr Sharples is one of those gifted communicators who can get away with saying almost anything. ("Why did the Maori cross the road? To get the other side. Why did 10 Pakeha cross the road? To make sure the Maori didn't put a claim on it," he joked at the conference.)
Dr Sharples' teflon qualities were evident this week with little reaction to his radical notion for free access for Maori to university.
Labour is giving the Maori Party an easy ride because it has not yet developed a strategy to deal with it.
Labour eventually issued a press statement a day and a-half later on Dr Sharples' speech, but there were no questions in the House on it.
Reaction on blog sites and talkback radio would suggest, however, that this, the most extreme of ideas mooted this term, sparked considerable disquiet among the public if not in the political arena.
According to Dr Sharples himself, it was an idea he never expected would get off the ground - and perhaps not anticipating the reaction, it was not discussed widely with colleagues.
The speech illustrates one of the difficulties facing the Maori Party of finding the balance between giving MPs their voice and mana, and having to work within political realities.
Those realities include saving your battles for the ones you might win - such as the highly sensitive Foreshore and Seabed review that is about to land back in the Government's lap in two weeks' time.
Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira, the self-appointed conscience of the Maori Party, drew comparisons this week in his newsletter between his party and (unnamed) iwi that had bought into the corporate image of professionalism and objectivity in their dealings, which he believes has been at the expense of fighting for social justice.
The Maori Party has been phenomenally successful in securing a role in Government after only one term in Parliament.
Both it and National need to remain mindful of not just where they are taking their policies but if they are taking their constituencies with them.
Otherwise they could turn out to be a one-term phenomenon.
- Audrey Young is The New Zealand Herald's political editor.
