Asking for your prayers/well wishes

(Going by my own research and talks with my docs)

From what I hear, the kids are about the same as adults. What's making this flu so scary is that the medial age of death from it is 31, with the highest numbers around 24-35. The elderly (which are usually of the highest risk) are handling it much better than us young guns.
What happens is this flu (H1N1) is attacking the lungs in a much larger, deeper way than usual flu's. In response, the immune system attacks it aggressively, and floods the lungs with too much fluid, leaving them badly infected. Then you get a really bad bronchitis (which happened to me) which can then lead to pneumonia (which happened to my father). People with weaker immune systems arent having the overly aggressive attacks by the immune systems, so they are actually fairing better. Since your daughter is 4, she probably has received the pneumonia vaccine as a baby, which is good. The vaccine lasts for 10 years. Right now they are advocating the pneumonia vaccine as being more important than the actual flu vaccine. Its the secondary infections you have to worry about. Just keep her quiet, give her LOTS of fluids and she should be OK. And if you can get it, tamiflu is helping greatly, but I am not sure how old you have to be to use it.

 

I can personally confirm the sufferings of H1N1. It took me about 5 days to recover from it marginally. But I didn't what I'd consider "full strength" until about a week later, and then again I didn't stopped regulary coughing from a dry scratchy mucus filled throat until a week after that. So all in all I wasn't normal again until about 20 days after it hit me. That's how annoying it was. But what happened during the last 14-15 days was NOTHING compared to the first 5 days. It hits you like a train and then it's 5-7 days of sick on a stick. I had about 2 or 3 days of diarhea, and 2 nights of vomiting. which is a reminder, if you do get H1N1, your appetite will essentially go away. I tried to force myself to eat something, and most of the time it stayed down. But for some reason, anything I ate in the evening would come right back out at night.

Sleepless sick nights SUCK. Alot.

Glad everyone's recovering, Pack. Strength will return as soon as a ton of food returns.

 

Second what Pack said. The scary thing about this flu is that it's causing very deep lung infections in otherwise healthy, young people. My healthy 25 year old friend developed severe pneumonia after getting the swine flu. The pneumonia was antibiotic resistant so she was in the hospital for several days and then needed Super antibiotics. After 4 weeks she's finally feeling better and returned to work.

It's important to get lots of fluids and rest, and to walk around so that the fluids can't settle in your lungs as easily. If the symptoms don't go away, come back, or get worse, get medical help quickly.

Here's to the health of us all!

 

best wishes to your family packleader if i can help in any way dont hesitate to ask

 

Keebler elves are a minor threat compared to underpants gnomes. Those guys are brutal!

Glad to hear that things are looking up for everyone who has been sick! If I didn't have to work, I'd be barricading myself in the house right now!

 

Best wishes and I hope for a speedy recovery.

 

I can't believe I missed this thread. Pack I am so sorry for both of your suffering and I am relieved that you are both recovering. You are both in my thoughts and prayers.
I send you both my love:sweethear and if there was a hugging smiley I would send you a virtual hug (as well as zjpeter, we all know how much he loves hugs)

 

glad things are getting better.

40 pounds. wow.


Several years ago i lost 12 pounds to Salmonella. I thought that was bad! I ended up keeping the weight down and decided to change my diet and lost another 30 something pounds over 8 months. (happy to say I've kept the weight off for about 8 years now!).

40 in that time period. man. can't even imagine what that's like. (I'm 5'8" and 130# now... 40 seems quite huge to me).

 

My prayers are with you and your family

 

Sorry to hear packleader. I'm sure everybody here at 3reef is wishing for the best. God bless you and your family.