I’ve never heard of gangrene because of lung collapse - truly scary!!
Taylor Whitney Brian, 19, became the fourth person to die in Louisiana from swine flu or swine flu complications
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/57668737.html?showAll=y&c=y
Early tests were negative
Mother: Swine flu not diagnosed until 2 days before death
By SANDY DAVIS
Advocate staff writer
Published: Sep 8, 2009 - Page: 1A
The 19-year-old Denham Springs woman who died Saturday from swine flu had been tested three times for Type A influenza since she first became ill Aug. 20, her mother said.
Each time, the test came back negative.
It wasn’t until she was hospitalized that she was tested specifically for swine flu, which was confirmed Thursday.
Two days later, Taylor Whitney Brian, a senior at Denham Springs High School, became the fourth person to die in Louisiana from swine flu or swine flu complications.
She died at Baton Rouge General Medical Center-Bluebonnet, where she had been treated since Aug. 29, said Ruthie Brian, her mother.
“My daughter was a healthy, vibrant young girl. She did not have any underlying illness,” Brian said. “She went from being a healthy child one minute to this. It’s just so hard to believe.”
Bill Spear, superintendent of the Livingston Parish school system, said Monday that “School will be open on Tuesday and counselors will be on hand to help students deal with the death of our student.”
He also said the district is taking every precaution to try and prevent other students from becoming infected.
“We’re fortunate that no students have been on campus for three days because of the holiday weekend,” he said.
Spear said district employees were at the high school Monday “wiping down desks, doorknobs and other common areas where students frequent.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site, “swine flu is only contact viable for two to eight hours,” Spear said.
“But we’d rather err on the side of caution,” he said.
Ruthie Brian said that when her daughter first became sick on Aug. 20, she took her to the doctor and was told her daughter had strep throat. She was given antibiotics.
The doctor also tested the teen to see if she had the flu, Brian said.
The test came back negative, Brian said.
The rapid flu test is generally performed in a doctor’s office to determine whether a patient has Type A flu, Type B flu or does not have the flu.
Swine flu, or novel H1N1 as it is also known, is one of several strains of Type A flu. State health officials have said they assume anyone who tests positive for Type A flu has swine flu.
The state Department of Health and Hospitals is no longer testing for swine flu unless a patient with flu symptoms is hospitalized or the patient’s doctor is one of the state’s sentinel physicians, a group of doctor’s across the state asked by DHH to help monitor the outbreak.
In recent months, private laboratories have been certified by the state to conduct the tests, and some doctors are using these laboratories.
Taylor Brian went back to school Aug. 24 and 25.
By Aug. 26, she told her mother she didn’t feel well and stayed home from school.
Over the next few days, Ruthie Brian took her daughter back to the doctor two more times and each time the doctor tested her for Type A flu.
“And each time the tests came back negative,” Ruthie Brian said.
Taylor Brian became so sick on Aug. 29, her doctor sent her to the hospital.
“She didn’t feel good during the first few days she was in the hospital, but she was still talking and sending text messages to her friends and watching TV,” Ruthie Brian said.
In her first few days at the hospital, doctors tested Taylor Brian twice for swine flu, but the samples had to be sent to out-of-town laboratories and the results weren’t going to be back for five to 14 days, Ruthie Brian said.
“It was frustrating,” Brian said. “We thought all along she had swine flu.”
By Monday night, doctors decided to begin treating the teenager for swine flu, Brian said.
“They started giving her Tamiflu,” Brian said of the anti-viral drug used to treat the symptoms of swine flu.
State health officials, however, have said Tamiflu works only if it is given within the first 24 to 48 hours of the onset of flu symptoms.
In the middle of the night on Sept. 1, Taylor Brian started having trouble breathing and she was taken to the intensive care unit, her mother said.
Doctors decided to take a third swine flu sample, and this time they found a laboratory in Baton Rouge that could perform the test and return the results within a few days.
“On Thursday, we were told Taylor tested positive for swine flu,” Brian said. “We were relieved because we knew she was being treated for swine flu and this also explained why there was this horrendous attack on her lungs. We thought she would be all right.”
Brian said doctors said at first her daughter would recover, but it might take awhile. “I just told them that my baby needed to be all right by prom,” Brian said. “She lived and breathed her senior year. It was the highlight of this child’s life.”
But early Saturday morning, Taylor Brian died.
“She died from pneumonia,” Ruthie Brian said. “If you get swine flu, you can get the complication of pneumonia.”
Brian said she does not blame the doctors.
“They did everything they could,” Brian said. “The flu tests kept coming back negative. What else could they have done?”
Public information from DHH over individual deaths from swine flu has been minimal. Even Spear said he had not been contacted by DHH over Taylor Brian’s death.
Ruthie Brian said she has a warning for other parents.
“When your child first has flu symptoms, don’t get them tested for the regular flu,” she said. “Get them tested specifically for swine flu.
“I don’t want to see another child suffer like Taylor did,” she said.
Penny Arcade Expo swine flu cases revealed
US show could have spread illness
Sep 9, 2009
http://play.tm/news/26579/penny-arcade-expo-swine-flu-cases-revealed/
A new Twitter update from those behind last week’s Penny Arcade Expo has admitted that they have received reports of a number of swine flu cases from the big US games event.
Apparently, 15 flights to and from Seattle contained PAX attendees who it is later believed were diagnosed with the illness.
The list of flights is available on the Penny Arcade website.
This from PA’s Robert Khoo, speaking to Kotaku: “This is the real thing. If you get this number of people together in this close a proximity it is the perfect storm for these kind of wild fire virus spreads. We just want to make sure everyone is informed.”