I talked to a friend who works in the biochem industry this weekend about the pros and cons of getting a flu shot. I’ve decided that I will, because the only experience I’ve had with the flu was terrible; it swept through where I work two years ago and we all got it. I described what it was like and she looked askance and said she thought I’d probably developed walking pneumonia, not just the flu; she took classes on virology so I suppose she knows more about that sort of thing than I do. I considered it myself at the time, but decided it didn’t seem bad enough to really be pneumonia because most everyone I’ve know to have it was in bed for days/weeks.
For asthma sufferers, is this a typical flu presentation? Or worse?:
In addition to the typical headache, fever, muscle aches, and exhaustion from the flu, I also had trouble breathing for a couple of weeks after most of the first symptoms went away. My chest was congested and I had a persistent cough (I don’t remember if it was productive cough or not), and it felt like a weight was on my chest all the time. I didn’t have any energy, but it was hard to tell if that was the lingering effects of the flu, or if it was because I had trouble breathing. It took nearly a month before I was able to do anything other than sleep when I wasn’t working: typically I get 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep, and that month I was sleeping 10-13 hours a day.
Is that what the flu is like for people with asthma, or did it get worse than I realized?
And a related question: the flu is a virus, so does that mean the type of pneumonia people develop after it is also viral, or could it be bacterial and treated with antibiotics?
It’s extremely scary to have trouble breathing when the inhaler doesn’t work anymore. It’s not like pneumonia. It does not always develop into a long term infection as your did, but it is much more likely. The thing is, by the time you really should be getting yourself to the emergency room, you don’t really have enough energy to do so.
It may not always present so badly, but the only time I know it’s the flu is when the doctor sticks the thing up my nose and tells me. And the only time the doctor ever sticks the thing up my nose is when I’ve made it to the emergency room.
Until this H1N1 vaccine is available everyone that coughs has the plague.
Well, keeping in mind that I have mildasthma… it’s sort of like that, except I don’t sleep at all well because I keep waking up with a feeling of suffocation, and my chest feels “tight” as well as being congested, coughing, and having no energy. Of course, unlike yourself, I had medications on hand to help with all that, with side effects like shaking hands and restlessness.
If you have trouble breathing you really should go to the doctor, you know?
For people with worse asthma it can result in a trip to the emergency room via ambulance, or worse.
And a related question: the flu is a virus, so does that mean the type of pneumonia people develop after it is also viral, or could it be bacterial and treated with antibiotics?
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My asthmatic son’s just had H1N1. In previous years he’s been prescribed nothing for the flu (after the Tamiflu scares) but told to take OTC fever reducers and simply rest. This despite being asthmatic.
However, last week an 11 year old boy died in our town of the new flu.
This time my son got prescribed Relenza (which I really think has shortened the duration of this flu), an antibiotic which was given with the explanation that 60% of the deaths from H1N1 have been from pneumonia caused by secondary bacterial infection. I am not sure if that’s the Japan deaths or worldwide deaths. He also got an anti bleeding drug and an anti swelling one - these are being prescribed to all kids in the town who get the flu as the boy that died died when his brain swelled. The dr said we could discontinue those as soon as his fever dropped below 38C. (100F)
My son’s on the fifth day of his flu and he’s pretty much better - tired, washed out, FOUR kilograms lighter (at nearly 13 years old) and he now has a productive cough that’s yellow. I think he has got a secondary infection. However he’s got some days of the antibiotics left and he’s not feverish or struggling so we’re watching and waiting just at the moment.
My bad - that was actually from the OP that I didn’t trim properly for my post. Just in case that caused any confusion. That’s what I get for posting before caffeine.
“Typical”? No, that would be an overstatement. But not uncommon.
A large number of asthmatics will get influenza just as bad and no worse than anyone else. But. It can serve as an asthma trigger and one that is much more likely than most triggers to put an asthmatic in the hospital or the ICU or even cause death. Kids with asthma are about 8x more likely to have influenza related complication than otherwise healthy children. Putting that into some real numbers - for the population at large the current numbers (mostly the Australian experience) are running that about 1 out of 200 to 300 of those with H1N1 end up in the hospital and about one 1 of 5 to 6 of those hospitalized end up in the ICU. Not so bad for influenza really. That would translate to about a 4% risk of hospitalization from an unprotected H1N1 infection in a child with asthma and a 1 out of 25 chance of ending up in an ICU. Does that make those bad courses “typical”? No. Enough of a risk to really try hard to avoid. Uh yeah.
I have mild, persistent asthma. I never seem to get the flu (I get the vaccine), but every cold or sinus infection tends to turn into bronchitis that lasts a couple of weeks after the cold’s gone. Sometimes, I take antibiotics to clear it up, sometimes it resolves itself on its own. Luckily, I don’t get a cold or anything but maybe once a year or so.
Runny nose = post nasal drip (for me at least) = irritated lungs.
It was an untreated (no insurance & no $100 for an office visit :mad:), month+ long, bout of bronchitis that turned into asthmatic bronchitis that did my lungs in in the first place. :smack:
:eek: < Asthma smiley
Last time I had flu was in 1998 - that was one year where a lot of folks who had the flu shot got sick anyway.
The respiratory issues started like any other cold - increase in coughing / tightness. That progressed, the inhaler wasn’t working all that well, and I was having trouble lying down to sleep. I wound up having to go to the doctor, as my home arsenal wasn’t up to the task. Got oral steroids (I was already on inhaled steroids and had increased the dosage to the limit) and antibiotics to attack what was quite likely a secondary infection in the lungs.
The pure “flu” symptoms (aches, fever, chills) were most likely no worse than anyone else would have experienced. The respiratory symptoms that a non-wheezer would shrug off, are the real kickers with us asthmatics.
IIRC, it was a full week or more before I was feeling 100%. I think that was a combination of the residual flu effects, and the slowly improving lungs (struggling to breathe takes a lot out of you - and you can’t rest very well because it’s hard to lie down comfortably). I suspect that if I hadn’t gotten antibiotics / steroids, the lungs would have stayed bad quite a bit longer. Someone with more “brittle” asthma might get sicker faster, or not respond as well to the meds, and that’s where you can wind up spending time in the hospital and/or morgue.
Bacterial (well, I won’t rule out viral, but bacterial is pretty common). It’s called a secondary infection (the primary being viral, the bacterial being an opportunistic infection).
See, those inflamed lungs produce a lot of gunk, which bacteria like. If you’re coughing it up, the bacteria don’t have as much time to get all cosy and start families. If you’re having trouble coughing it up, they do. Which I think worsens the inflammation. I suspect also with all the crud, the immune system can’t attack things as well due to the sheer mechanics of the situation.