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Thanks so much for the ping. Prayers for the folks in Georgia - even the milder cases are no fun for this nasty “Chimera” flu, and definitely downright scary when the flu knocks down your defenses and you end up susceptible to secondary bronchial and respiratory infections...

When my daughter was in the hospital in mid-February here in Central Wisconsin (a regional “magnet”/higher-level hospital) the Peds ward was literally filled with children suffering from infectious diseases with flu-like symptoms (you could tell by looking at them frankly - and hearing the coughing of course). I will admit that I do not know how many were suffering from H1N1 other than two children who were on respirators in the PICU, or how many had other similar viruses and/or infections (I know two of them had Blastomycosis like my daughter, but the more normal respiratory pneumonia-like presentation. I think the real name is Pulmonary Blastomycosis. But that was 2 of perhaps 40-50 children if I do the math counting two beds per room as it looked like all if not most had.)

Now, I don’t know all of the thinking that went into the decision, but my daughter was automatically given a room in the Pediatric Oncology Ward — the reason we were told is because the children in the regular ward were very sick and contagious, and in the oncology section all parts have special airborne ventilation units with alarms on the patient rooms when too much “non-clean” air enters the room. The best way to prevent her from catching anything in the other section while we figured out what was wrong with her leg.

(To tell you the truth the way the nurses were talking made me a little wary at times to breath while passing through the regular ward, or while needing to be in that section for any extended period of time, as I had to do numerous times of the day while we were there! I made good use of the hand sanitizer conveniently placed in many spots around the ward.)

I also wanted to mention to you (forgot to ping you the other day), that the Pediatricians and my daughter’s Infectious Disease doctor discussed our family’s illness from last April with me for a while. They all agree that we most likely did have H1N1, and they also said that although it’s too soon to tell definitively that my family most likely had built up immunity to at least the original strain.

Also, despite hanging out in the family lounge with relatives of these infectious sick children, and walking through the regular ward numerous times a day (and definitely touching the counters and such in there when speaking with the docs and nurses...) none of us fell ill after my daughter’s hospitalization.

I know it’s all anecdotal information, but thought you may be interested to know... I feel fairly confident that due to getting this illness - unless it mutates a lot - those exposed and who became ill do have some sort of immunity which is good news. As I said about the mutation — that’s the only thing that worries me at this point... But then that’s a risk we face every year even with the more common flu viruses...