My son has the swine flu , page 1

There's some real info on this virus you need to be aware of, unfortunately getting this info from your Dr seems to be luck of the draw.

There are different variants of the virus with very different courses of infection. Oddly enough the short and sudden variant is the one that seems to kill people. That one comes on very quickly, often with no fever or other severe symptoms and then the immune system ramps up very suddenly and within hours the patient has a high fever and severe breathing difficulties. In other patients the immune response does not occur and the result is a mild illness which last for a few days to a week with a full recovery.

The long time line variant is the variant which hit some of the small Mexican villages. People also had the short and sudden version but most of them had this weird, longer lasting type. The long version is mainly respiratory in it's effect and seems to leave it's victims with secondary infections such as pneumonia and staph infections. These patients were treated with antibiotics and most of them recovered. The fatalities in those villages were all either from the short and sudden immune system overload or secondary pneumonia.

If I were you here's what I'd do (and my kids and myself have been in this exact situation so I know that of which I speak).

1. Talk to your doctor about the respiratory effects and secondary infections. It's very easy to verify by checking some of the case history in the media from La Gloria, as an example. Even though your child might not be showing signs of pneumonia at this time the addition of antibiotics to his or her treatment will break the long time line cycle that seems to keep the flu and it's secondary infections from rotating through your child's system for months.

2. Make sure your child bathes every day even if he or she doesn't feel well. Just be careful about water temperature and fevers. For reasons unknown the virus leaves people susceptible to staph infections in a big way. Other than antibiotics the best prevention is to keep any external staph under control. Keeping internal staph from increasing it's levels into an active infection requires keeping the body in balance - yogurt and other digestive balancing foods are a good idea.

Other than getting medicines your child might need you'll probably realize after a while that running he or she back and forth does little good overall. They can only treat symptoms and try to make the victims comfortable. Just be very vigilant about watching for any breathing problems, they come on fast and hard w/ this bug and if that happens you need to get to a hospital. Don't be afraid to call for an ambulance in that type of situation either - the application of supplemental oxygen should be your only goal and concern at that point.

Good luck.

[edit on 22-9-2009 by ecoparity]