Amantadine 'n stuff

[Guest guest]

Hi,

JENNIE, Blame Daelynn for the AAT def. discussion, LOL. She's having her

family tested to see if anyone carries the genes, and she brought it up as a

possible genetic pulmonary thing to explore with Kailin (AAT deficiency

causes early lung obstruction and genetic emphesema/COPD later on in life).

As for the flu in our family, I really do think there must be an immune

system quirk like the on-call pulm. suggested yesterday. I mean who has

THAT good a track record for getting the flu 4 years in a row despite

getting the shots (we can only blame one year on A Sydney when that strain

wasn't covered in the vaccine). The odd thing is that our pulm. did a

functional immunities work-up on Meagan before we knew she had CF, and she's

had a good immune response to her childhood vaccinations,and she had a

before and after immune response test for the pneumovax vaccine, and had a

great response to that, too. Go figure!

I've got one word to say to anyone whose kids get influenza this year--

AMANTADINE!!! This stuff WORKS (though the kids say it tastes worse than

Prelone). The trick is you've got to identify the flu and get them started

on it as soon as possible (definitely w-in the first 48 hours). Kailin and

Meagan went to bed last night in total misery. Meagan's temp. was 202.5 and

she was shaking uncontrolably with chills-- she couldn't even walk across

the room. She wouldn't eat anything yesterday, and only licked

half-heartedly at a spoon of icecream I offered. Today her temp was down to

100.7 by morning, and the 99's by tonight, and she's been eating icecream,

Pedialyte popsicles, and even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch

and veggie patties for dinner! She's still got a lot of pulm. stuff going

on (bad cough, full of mucus, chest pain), but the flu virus itself has

loosened its grip. As for Kailin (just asthma), she's even doing a lot

better pulmonary-wise, and was almost as active as usual today. Compare

this to me (no Amantadine)-- the flu took hold and I'm still sick on day 11.

As for life in general, my in-laws left this morning, Ken did half of all

the kid care today (and also started in on a mountain of laundry), and I'm

so happy. Now the kids are in bed, Ken's on campus catching up on some phone

interviews he was supposed to do while his parents were here, and it's just

me and a big box of Jelly Belly jelly beans :)

bye,

, mom of Meagan almost-5 (cf, asthma), and Kailin 7 (asthma)