In October 2022 I put my then 2.5 year old child in daycare, and I have been sick ever since. I know it is common for illness to circulate constantly in families with young children, but the problem is every time I get hit, I get hammered.
Norovirus? My son was sick for a single night. My husband was sick for two days. I was sick for nine days. Nine.
Somewhere along the line, I developed cough-variant asthma which means even if I have a mild cold, it is followed by several days of uncontrollable coughing and generally feeling like I am suffocating. I do have an emergency inhaler and a preventative inhaler I use but they seem little match for respiratory illness. In the past I’ve had to go to my PC for steroid pills to alleviate the cough, but my allergist asked me not to do that.
The upshot is I am exhausted all the time. Even when the illness passes, I still feel tremendous fatigue.
I’ve always been kind of a sickly person ever since I was a little kid, but I don’t remember having a difficult time with recovery, and the asthma is a recent development.
Why does illness hit me so hard, and is there anything I can do about it?
Discuss the issues with your physicians, particularly your allergist/immunologist. That’s the real expert as to whether you have an actual problem with your immune system.
Avoid info from the internet regarding items which ‘support the immune system’ as it’s 99.99% BS.
Unfortunately I don’t have anything to suggest for getting better, (no point in suggesting rest when there is a 2.5 year old in the house) and like the good doctor says, supplements and other stuff aren’t going to do anything except use money.
You probably already know the next things I’ll say, but I had to force myself to do them after getting the lesson drilled into me the hard way, even though I intellectually knew them all to be true.
Don’t share food with the kid. For me it is painful to throw away that pizza crust or half eaten bowl of granola, but if the kid is sick, eating the scraps will get me sick.
Wash your hand! Wash the kid’s hands! Picked up whatever random item the kid used to wipe their nose? Wash your hands. Basically, be always washing your hands so much that you have to get a prescription for a steroid cream because the back of your hands are covered in red dots.
Just avoid as much as possible many of the disgusting things that gets normalized in parenting. The binky does not go in your mouth. Don’t lick your fingers, clean the kid’s face, then lick your fingers again to get the other cheek.
I also know that with a 2.5 year old those things can be extremely difficult (“don’t stick your fingers in Mommy’s mouth, please!”)
Exactly what @Qadgop_the_Mercotan says. Really, if you have a good allergist, they can shed light on much of what might be causing your extreme reactions.
Also, from my own experience, a proper diet and a good night’s sleep can go a huge way to helping you fight this kind of experience. I have finally learned rather late in the game, to eat better quality foods and tons of veggies and legumes. Learn how to cook Indian dishes and enjoy the spices. Good food can help you heal and continue to protect you from illness.
I’d second a visit to an allergist/immunologist who can evaluate you, rule out any immunodeficiency disorder and recommend prevention/treatment options.
And yeah, OTC supplements basically support the sellers’ bank accounts.
Yeah, I was hoping for like, “This one vitamin has been scientifically demonstrated to boost your immune system!” I know it wasn’t a realistic wish.
I don’t think I’ve ever had COVID? Every time I get a weird illness, I test negative for it. I had a bout with what was probably RSV in October and it feels like that kicked everything off. But I tested for COVID twice during that illness and was negative both times.
One of the types of “long covid” is chronic fatigue syndrome, but a lot of other viruses can trigger that.
But that that helps much. I don’t think there’s much you can do about chronic fatigue syndrome other than wait for it to resolve, which typically takes a year or longer.
It occured to me to wonder whether there might be a nutrient that was conspicuously absent from your diet, which isn’t quite the same as recommending supplements to “boost your immune system.” But I am neither a doctor nor a nutritionist.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard people attribute their good health to drinking lots of water. And I, personally, am generally pretty healthy, and I try to drink plenty of water, but of course correlation ain’t causation, especially at the anecdotal level. Still, it might be worth asking if you’re allowing yourself to become dehydrated.
Honest ignorant question here: do you really see many adult onset immunodeficiencies that present as somewhat more prolonged common viral infections, same as the rest of the household gets just lasting longer?
My not an adult doc guess is no. Essentially none. Please educate me if I’m mistaken.
The allergist is important, and probably will do all sorts of tests just cause, but the value they will bring is the asthma control plan. Ramping up at the onset of the cold or asthma symptoms, considering monitoring with a peak flow for early warning … so on.
Experience fighting off the viruses this year will be your protection for next year.
Meanwhile best option is achieving the impossible: decent sleep, and quality nutrition in the form of real foods. Yeah not supplements. Regular exercise with adequate recovery periods helps also.
Avoiding exposure when parenting a preschooler is beyond impossible.
I have an allergist, but I don’t know if that’s the same thing as an immunologist.
Also wanted to mention I tend to break out in hives when I get sick, too.
I got allergy testing and he said I’m not allergic to anything (which is contrary to the last allergy test I had which said I was allergic to cats and dust mites.) But he did say I had cough-variant asthma. I have to see him every three months now.
I am doing my damnedest to exercise and cook healthy but it’s difficult when I’m sick all the freaking time. Staying well hydrated is a goal I can work on. I do drink water but probably not enough.
If they’re actual board certified allergists, they’re also board certified immunologists, as it’s a combined specialty since allergy is immunology based. They take the board exams after doing a fellowship in allergy/immunology. Most such folks also are boarded either in internal medicine or pediatrics prior to their fellowship training.
Anyone else calling themselves an allergist needs to be well grounded in immunology also.
Allergists/immunologists are also the specialists I trust overall the most to manage difficult asthma cases, even moreso than pulmonologists (many of whom do a fine job of it too, though).
This one vitamin has been scientifically demonstrated to boost your immune system (if deficient):
[ insert all of the vitamins ]
That said, usually it’s vitamin D that’s deficient. But, if you’re getting regular checkups, I’d expect that they’re testing for it… If you’re not getting regular checkups with a blood test, then I’d look into that.
But in practice ISTM many are focused on allergy and don’t do much immunology focused on infection susceptibility. Again, not an adult sample set, but I see academic immunologists and ID folk do that lots more.
Is it possible that the reason I’m having this issue is my immune system doesn’t have time to recover between illnesses? I’m not sure if it works that way.
There’s been no clear link between vitamin D deficiency and immune deficiency. The current evidence based conclusion states: “In addition to its role in calcium and bone homeostasis, vitamin D could potentially regulate many other cellular functions. However, there are insufficient data to confirm a causal relationship between vitamin D deficiency and the immune, cardiovascular, and metabolic systems.” So we just don’t know yet. (From UpToDate.com article on “Vitamin D and extraskeletal health”.)
Even so, vitamin D is the only vitamin supplement I actually take myself.
It doesn’t really work like that, unless it’s a serious acute life-threatening illness that drains your body of the resources to continue producing an immune response. Or a severe chronic condition that does the same. Asthma could qualify for that, if it required chronic routine use of oral steroids to keep under control.
Ask your allergist if they can address your immune system concerns, see what they say.
My first 15 years in medicine were years of chronic viral type illnesses, until I finally got exposed to enough of the common pathogens to shrug most of them off.