does not need to appear as part of his essay writing. PLEASE. And I quote.."It won't be long before I am a grown up dude." :001_huh:

That is quicker than I thought. Good for them to report it so fast. IMO, that kind of changes things. This was a Mexican case of what is going around in Mexico and not one of the US cases. To me, that makes a bit of difference. I worry about everyone globally, but I also feel like each country has to take care of their own right now.

I know...we are such an " I want it and I want it NOW" country, aren't we? LOL :bigear:

SEE! This is kind of an important fact, now isn't it. We are not told these things. This child is a child from Mexico (where the disease is possible more virulent and health care is lacking) and, while I am deeply saddened for this family, you have to think of the lack of medical care that the child had at home...and prior to this infection. Also, how far into the disease was he/she before the parents came to America to seek help? We just don't know and there are a lot of variables. :( I do hope that Mexicans do not illegally cross the borders and innundate our hospitals with the sick from Mexico City. 1. It spreads the disease further and 2. we will soon have our own sick to care for. THis could be a really bad thing if it happens. :(

I wouldn't worry too much. Were those people kept in the hospital or just swabbed there? Either way, I am sure it has been disinfected since then. Not to mention, there have been some cases "suspected" that have proven NOT to be H1N1.

She posted "Small town Alabama" up in the title area. :)

Not food, but utterly hilarious and along the same lines... www.uglydress.com. Just as a sample of what you are in store for... http://uglydress.stores.yahoo.net/pregpromdres.html

I have a good friend who tried working as a housekeeper/maid for about 2 days before she told them where to go. :( It is sad how that industry treats their employees! I hope better times are ahead!

I think the 150 is "suspected" while the 7 or whatever is "confirmed." Unless they are going to start digging up bodies, I am not sure how they can know for sure with ones who died previously. I think they are a just counting from when the hooplah started. Crazy how "off" all of the information is!

I was going to say diabetes too. My older son had a classmate in ps who exhibited the SAME symptoms and the doctor misdiagnosed her. It is a wonder that she is still alive! Thanks to her mom's gut instinct, they tested her sugars and figured it out before it was too late. Please get him to the doc asap and have him checked.

Me me!

Just be really careful. I have a friend who used one with deet on her son without really thinking about it and he got very, very sick. I have no recommendations other than maybe a natural type of some sort. Could you maybe ask the other adults what they use for their kids? Perhaps they make something and sell it there that they do not make or sell here since we do not have the same issues in the US?

Personally, I wouldn't take the meds because I feel they offer little to no help. I have fought a strain of the flu that had me flat on my back for weeks. Then, I got secondary walking pneumonia (I was 17 and STUPID) and I still didn't go to the doctor. This is not what I would do now...but unless I suspected a secondary infection, I couldn't breathe well, felt it was moving to my chest, etc. I would probably not run out and get an antiviral med. With my kids, I was slightly surprised that my kids' doc did not give antivirals. This is not ONE doc...this is a big group of 8-9 docs. None of them will give anti-virals. They also don't recommend alternating tylenol and motrin and they were one of the first groups to stop recommending OTC cold medicines for kids. They seem to have the philosophy that less is better and, for the most part, I agree. My oldest son had the flu when he was 4.5 and it was honestly the sickest I have ever seen a child in my life. It was terrifying. We took him to the doctor on a Monday for vomiting. They did a repid flu test and it came back negative. The next morning, around 5am, he woke with a 104.5 degree fever and asked me why the room was moving around and around. Then he threw up. I immediately put him in a luke warm bath and gave him meds to take the fever down, but he vomited the meds. He vomited 6 more times before I could get him to the doctor that morning (had to wait until they opened at 8am). When we got there (this is the NEXT day, mind you...we had the first flu test on Monday and it was negative), the doc did another rapid flu test. He was positive for both A and B influenza. The A strain was the H3N2 Fujan strain, they never typed the B strain. Over the next 7 days, my poor child vomited almost continuously. Sip of a drink, throw up. Dose of medicine, throw up. His fever didn't get below 103 the entire time and meds did almost nothing to help. His personality totally changed - he was quiet and cried almost non-stop from pain and aches. God-awful, horrendous, horrific, terrifying - none of those words quite describe what that experience was like. However, THAT was the flu. He never got a secondary infection and he did recover....but not without shaving about 15 years off his momma's life in worry alone!

Hypothetically, if you or your children got the swine flu, would you seek out a dr and get something like Tamiflu for yourself and/or the kids? I called my kids dr today (since we are an hour away) and asked some questions about what to do if the kids showed symptoms (we have 5 college students with swine flu about 20 miles from here at a university). Anyway, their doc (whom we have been seeing for 5 years) said he does not give the antivirals to kids. I am not sure if this is good or bad or neither. I am not even sure I would go get the drug for myself. Is it 100% necessary? I mean, would it help with the cytokine storm if that were going to happen? I would never normally go run out and get Tamiflu...but is this different? Just wanting some other opinions. I know that if there is a vaccine, the kids and I will NOT be getting it.

LOL I sold mine and I so regret doing that! However, she doesn't recommend CLE or HOD in her top 100, so blah. I now disagree with her anyway. :tongue_smilie:

Sometimes, people just vomit. However, (I am now going to give you the commercial disclaimer) you are in an area where cases of swine flu have been found, so monitor ds closely for further vomiting and especially fever. (End of disclaimer)

Goop is good. You are quite lucky your ds didn't catch your dryer on fire.

Yeah, most of the outbreaks have been in Africa. There was one outbreak in a lab in Reston VA, but it was only transmissable between monkeys (and I think two lab workers died as well in Reston). Ebola Reston is a bit of a different virus than Ebola Zaire. Ebola Zaire is straight out of a horror movie, IMO. Whole villages wiped out in 3 DAYS. *shudder*

The flu shot can be very effective for some...however, it takes at least 2 weeks to even get in your system and start doing some good. IMO, it is too late for the flu shot, even if it did offer some protection (which they are saying that it really doesn't for the hybrid H1N1 we are seeing now. It did contain a strain of the A - H1N1 human virus though). You asked in another post if I was the one with all of the worry issues. Yep...that is me! I have been OCD all my life and it tends to manifest in extreme health anxiety. For instance, when I was pregnant, I ate a hotdog and worried for a week that I have lysteria. Some of my "episodes" are silly, others are downright life altering. For 3 years, I was convinced I had a brain tumor and was slowly declining in health. I WAS declining in health - because the stress, fear, and anxiety had taken over my life. I lost close to 50 pounds in 3 months. I didn't eat, I barely lived at all. I have also worried about my younger son dying of SIDS (when he was a baby) to the point where I didn't sleep at night so I could watch him breathe. When I say that I am a hypochondriac, I do not mean it lightly like "oh, I am a worrier" - no, I am actually a clinically diganosed OCD hypochondriac. And yes, I am finding a lot of peace in this situation. When I was 14, I made the mistake of reading a book called "The Hot Zone." It was about Ebola virus. I spent a year researching Ebola and what it does to the body, how fast it spreads, etc. That disease is terrifying. If Ebola Zaire were to ever get to the US and start spreading in humans, suffice it to say, none of us would live to tell about it. It has about a 90% death rate. This swine flu...and even the avian flu do not carry as much weight as something like Ebola. They are survivable, there is a CHANCE. KWIM? That comforts me in many ways - as does my faith in the power of prayer. :)

Absolutely! Pick your battles, I say. And even if a whole slew of people say, "I agree," oh well...then you know the ones you may be least likely to jive with. However, with the sheer number of posters on this board, that leaves PLENTY of people you WOULD jive with. I ignore a lot of posts here because I am prone to start getting mouthy if I jump in and really feel strongly for something. Most of the time, when a thread has 8 pages on something that seems mundane, I skip it. It has obviously overheated.

They later reported that this was misinformation. One of the deaths was 100% NOT swine flu. The other is being looked into. One was a 45 year old man who died on the 22nd from pneumonia and the other a 33 year old man with breathing trouble and lymphoma (cancer). They didn't say which was ruled out and which they were looking further into. That said, we WILL see deaths from this flu. It is inevitable. There is ALWAYS death with the flu - every year 36,000 people in the US alone die of the flu. As this spreads and hits immunocompromised people, the elderly, the very young, etc. there will be deaths. We just have to prepare ourselves for that fact and do the absolute best we can to take care of our own.

This a very reassuring quote from that link. “Many family members of these students and staff are also sick," he continued. "We would normally expect to see 1 out of every 5 family members of a person with flu get sick — and that is exactly what we’re seeing with swine flu. And very reassuringly all of the cases have been mild both in students and in staff.â€

Unfortunately, they offer extremely cheap labor. My husband's uncle hires migrant workers each year for help around the farm. I am not even sure where/how he finds them since we live nowhere close to the Mexican border. I will tell you all that I did have a sense of panic last night and some this morning...especially after discovering 5 cases right in my back door (20 mile drive from me at a University), however, God has given me a peace lately about the whole thing. And it is definitely a peace that passes understanding...which is why I can safely say it is from God. We all just have a storm to weather. The worry can cease...it is time to buckle down and do what we can to keep our families safe. God bless to you all and I pray that this never turns into what it has the potential to turn into.

That was very helpful without being frightening. Thank you for posting.

No...and not for his safety only, but for the safety of your family. My bet is that the CDC will okay Cozumel because we are all supposed to be NOT freaking out and that would make people freak out. :(