Last Wednesday, Garrett's nose started sounding stuffy. By the end of the day he said his head, throat and stomach hurt and he was running a 101 degree fever. During the night, he woke up saying his throat hurt really bad and his fever was up to 102. So I gave him more Tylenol, water, and throat spray. By Thursday morning, the fever was gone without any meds. He seemed to be basically himself, besides saying that his head, throat and stomach still hurt. But none of those kept him from playing like normal and eating like normal so I held off taking him to the doctor. Early that evening, his temp went back up to 101. I told myself the next day I would take him to the doctor, but he slept just fine that night and woke up on Friday without a fever and hasn't had one since. He still occasionally says his throat or stomach hurts and his nose is a little runny/stuffy and he now has an occasional cough. (I think the only reason why he hasn't had a cough the whole time is because of this new inhaler he's on that we're using faithfully. It's been a God-send already!)
So is this the flu or not? Obviously if I had taken him to the doctor I would have a definitive answer. But equally true would be the fact that if he didn't have the flu, he probably would have caught it from someone in the waiting room. It's a matter of fact that it's spreading exceptionally fast in our area. Every other status update of my local friends on Facebook are saying that they or their children have the flu. To be honest, I really hope this was the flu. I want to be done with it so we don't have to worry about it again. I realize the seasonal flu will probably go around at some point, but I know it won't be near as rampant as this Swine flu has been. Thankfully Cooper has seemed to be ok. He did have one grouchy day last Thursday and today his nose has been a tad runny with an occasional cough. But not one bit of fever and he's eating and sleeping fine, so I'm not going to panic and run him to the doctor where he will also catch the flu.
To be honest, I wouldn't even stress about it if it wasn't for 2 things. 1) We obviously have a baby in the house. The news and everywhere continually stresses how TERRIBLE AND AWFUL this flu is for children under 2 and especially those under 6 months old. So I don't want to worry about him catching this. (Side note: As TERRIBLE AND AWFUL as this flu is supposed to be for little ones, I find it very encouraging that none of the deaths that I'm hearing about are children in this age range. The closest one has been the very first US death in Houston of a 23 month old. It's strange how hard it's hitting the school-aged kids.) 2) All the deaths of the school-aged kids in our area! I know that there are deaths from the seasonal flu every year, but I don't think they involve kids this young! Every week, I'm hearing on the news about a different student who has passed away from this. Even though I try very hard not to be a worry-wart, that sort of news rattles me a bit. They're always talking about how some of them have underlying medical conditions. As far as I know, they consider asthma one of those conditions and Garrett has that, so it really doesn't help me any to hear them attempt to explain away the death of a 16 year old, or a 14 year old, or a 12 year old, etc.
Finally: my thoughts on the vaccine. I am highly against this swine flu vaccine. I would honestly rather stress out about my kids having the swine flu and keeping a very close eye on them throughout the sickness, than to give them a vaccine that's been thrown together over the course of a few months with little testing having been done. That scares me much more. I really and truly hope that a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, we don't start hearing about different conditions and problems that have arisen in those who got this vaccine. I'm sure you've heard of the complications that came frome the last swine flu vaccine about 30 years ago. While I know they would have learned from those mistakes, who knows what new ones could come up. Why not spend the billions being spent on a vaccine, to ramping up more production of Tamiflu products instead? They don't really know the outcome of the vaccine, but they do know that Tamiflu seems to be helping the flu some, yet it's in a major short supply right now. Why aren't they fixing this problem as well?!
In order to prepare for the upcoming flu/cold season (regardless of whether or not we've actually had the Swine flu), I've stocked up on some supplies today just in case: Pedialyte (I really hope we don't need this, but it's not something I want to run to the store for when it is needed), disposable thermometer covers for Cooper's thermometer as well as some for the ear thermometer I use for Garrett, Keith, and myself, Tylenol, Kleenex, and anti-bacterial gel (we have quite a bit of this right now. A container in Keith's truck, one in my SUV, one in the kitchen for those moments I can't wash my hands, but need to santize them and also for Garrett to use if he can't wash his hands for some reason, one in my purse, and one in the diaper bag. We now have 2 extra containers for when these run out. Am I OCD? Yes.)
I normally love this time of year, but I'm not loving it right now. I'm already looking forward to next year when I won't have the "baby factor" to stress about.
No comments:
Post a Comment