Influenza A

Thursday afternoon I got a call from the school just a few minutes after school was over letting me know that William was not feeling well. They did not want him to ride the bus, so I figured he was sick to his stomach. I went over and picked him and the other boys up. William looked very pale and complained of a sore throat, nauseous stomach, and feeling achy all over. When we got home I took his temperature and he was running a fever of 101. We filled him with fluids, pain meds and he went to bed early (his decision). He then woke up multiple times during the night with pain and coughing. I debated Friday morning whether I should take him in or not and decided that I would wait and see if it would just run it's course on it's own. By 2 pm I knew I needed to take him in since his fever was up over 103 while on medicine and his cough had gone down into his chest. He has a lot of trouble with asthma so I didn't want to take a chance over the weekend.

Well, it was a good thing we decided to go in. Despite the fact that he had a flu shot earlier this season, they swabbed him for Influenza A and B which are both strains that are going around. His doctor said that they are beginning to see more children who are coming down with these flu viruses even though they had the flu shot. She told us the test would take about 15 minutes. Less then 5 minutes later she came back and said it had tested positive for influenza A almost immediately. Since it is so highly contagious, and we have two kids other than William who are at high risk for complications from the flu, she considered putting all the kids on Tamiflu. We decided to just have William, Bryce, and Annalise on it in the hopes that they at least would avoid it, or have a much milder case of it if they do get it. She also said that if Jacob or Spencer have any symptoms at all to call immediately and she would call in a script for them as well.

It had begun to go into William's bronchial tubes, so she is having us start him on albuterol (which we already had) and pulmicort in hopes that his asthma will not get worse. To make a really, really long story of trying to find a pharmacy which still had these medicines in stock short, we'll just say that 2 hours and $180 later we have the medicines that they need. I sure hope they help!

William had a rough night of coughing, puking, chills, fever, and pain. The poor kid is really sick. I could not believe how fast this flu came on. He is still running a fever and very miserable today. We will continue to push the fluids and hopefully soon he will be feeling better. I also really hope that no one else gets it!