29
The dreaded Flu(self.UKParenting)
submitted 3 weeks, 6 days ago* (edited 2 hours, 43 minutes after) by nosetears to /r/UKParenting (94.5k)
Anyone else being absolutely bombarded by news pieces on the flu. Closing schools it's sending child...
3 weeks, 3 days ago
—
3 weeks, 6 days ago17 of 17
Tip Reveddit Real-Time can notify you when your content is removed.
your account history
Tip Check if your account has any removed comments.
view my removed comments you are viewing a single comment's thread.
view all comments
It’s not sensationalist; my ITU is currently full of flu. Flu can kill you.
Get your vaccinations, wash your hands, wear a mask in public, wash your kids uniforms as soon as they get home.
I’m the only one masking on my train to work. My 2 year old has been really unwell (fever for 5/6 days), but as none of us have had it we’re assuming it isn’t this flu, but in a way I’m now more anxious, as she’s only just getting over whatever she’s had and I’d be really scared if she got flu on top.
Fingers crossed for you. We thought this with our almost 4yo… day 6/7 and now the rest of us are down. She had a fever, cough, runny nose, lethargy though so more symptoms than your little one
We are day 9/10 now and she’s fatigued still and not a huge appetite but much better. None of us are sick. She had a disgusting nose at times, like a volcano of disgustingness when she sneezed.
When she coughs it’s very chesty but she wasn’t coughing all the time. The fatigue has been really bad. Although she’s very lazy at the best of times so sometimes hard to tell what’s illness and what’s normal when she wants to be carried everywhere!
She’s had antibiotics since Monday as her temp wouldn’t go down with paracetamol and she wasn’t so listless barely able to sit up I was getting pretty worried. Hard to know whether she’d have recovered by herself, but we spoke to a paramedic clinician who could hear her cough over the phone and told us to take her to A&E (they have a GP out of hours there that they triage to).
They couldn’t hear anything on her chest, but when my other daughter was 4 she went to 2 different GPs who heard nothing and eventually had pneumonia confirmed by x-ray in A&E.
Oh wow that sounds scary for you guys and her! Glad she is doing better and hopefully she continues to improve.
There so many different viruses circulating at the moment, with overlapping symptoms… you just don’t know which one is in your household.
May you all remain well over the festive period and beyond.
Yes. Changing clothes when you get home is one of the main ways to prevent bringing illness into your home. Washing hands, changing clothes, taking off shoes in the home.
Edited
This might sound a stupid question, but for example if my child has been exposed to a virus at school so much that it is on his clothes, would it not make him ill? So that clothes washing ends up being pointless? Genuinely curious as would do anything to avoid sickness before Christmas
Viruses can live on different surfaces for different amounts of times. Idk if I can link on here but there’s lots of studies on how long bacteria, viruses, etc can live on fabric, metal, plastic, and so on. So if someone sits on a plastic chair at school that has recently been sneezed on (can live for several hours on it!) and gets a nice layer of of that fresh sneeze on their trousers, it can live on them for several hours. So you’d transfer that to your car, your couch once you plop on it, your bed when your kid rolls around on it if they don’t change, etc.
BUT! Sneezy trousers doesn’t translate to sick kid. If your kid doesn’t wipe his hands all over his bum that has sat on the chair and then eat food, he probably won’t ingest it. Hand washing is the most preventable way to keep from getting ill. So washing hands frequently, not touching your face, changing immediately when coming home and not wearing outside clothes, taking off shoes- these all help significantly in reducing illness. It’s not a one trick fixes all type of ordeal. They all work together.
It lasts a few hours. I’m a nurse and I take my uniform off at work and wash it as soon as I’m home. I kept Covid out of our house this way, so I replicate it with my kids.
Some of the headlines are sensationist is what I was saying. The fact that flu is awful and can land people in the hospital and can kill you is very real and the reason why I'm asking for perspective. I'm not eligible for the vaccination but my husband and children are and are fully vaccinated.
And I’m giving you perspective?
Just in case you didn’t know, you can just pay for the vaccine at Boots etc, it costs about 5 coffees
I really wish I could but unfortunately there is nowhere in my area that offers it privately otherwise I 100% would for piece of mind.
Not a single pharmacy in your entire area offers it? I find that really hard to believe
Yeh I would agree with OP. Based on reading news yesterday I spent ages trying to book in for a private flu vax locally and could not find anywhere that had any available slots until mid-Jan. it is quite difficult to find private places as well as most places seem to be geared towards those who are eligible. So yeh actually, OP is right!
Right if its availability, that I can understand. The way I read OP's comment is that nowhere even offered the option to have it private, not that they offered it but they were just too booked up.