REFLECTIONS

It is easy to recognize, and mock, media hype and hysteria when you see it.  Harder to to resist the cry of hysteria when it is your child that is sick.  When the BurkeanSon’s temperature hit 102 early this week, I freely admit the media’s swine flu hysteria got to me.

BurkeanSon is normally a very healthy kid.  His temp has only reached 101 a few times in his 10 years.   He has never had a fever as high as this one.  Worse yet he WANTED to stay in bed.  This is a kid who has never wanted to go to bed a day in his life.  When he had surgery for a bone spur he came out of anethstetic a half hour early.   So for BurkeanSon to want to nap is like President Obama to want to give tax relief.   We got an appointment with our pediatrician the same day.  The doc said he had the flu and it was most likely swine flu, since that is the only flu going around right now.  I was hoping he had bronchitis because I didn’t want to hear those piggy words.  He said BurkeanSon is not showing any of the danger signs, in fact his colorining was very good.  This is true to look at his coloring you would never know he was sick.

The doctor prescribed TamiFlu and here is the only newsworthy point of this blog post.  There is no liquid dose of TamiFlu available.  The pharmacy’s have run out and they are waiting for more.  So they took the adult capsules of TamiFlu and made a liquid syrup out of it right there in the pharmacy.  This involved a call to the insurance company to get approval.  Once the situation was explained to the “evil heartless” insurance company, approval was immediately granted.  It seemed like an eternity, but actually it was only an hour from getting to the pharmacy to getting the medicine.    Would a government bureaucrat have been able to get us the medicine in an hour?  Would a government bureaucrat have been able to get us the medicine in a week?   I can’t possibly see how layers of gov’t bureaucracy would have done anything but made the situation far worse.

The next day BurkeanSon’s fever went down a degree.  Now he has just a low degree fever, and cough and stuffiness and still doesn’t want to get out of bed, which is what worries me the most.  He is sicker than he has ever been, but that’s just because he is normally an energizer bunny rabbit who pounds away viruses.  As long as his fever doesn’t come back or his breathing get difficult he is fine.   As long as I don’t watch network news swine flu hysteria I should be okay as well.

I assume the lack of TamiFlu in a children’s dose is due to the fact that children aren’t usually in danger from the flu.  Since the flu is usually a threat to the elderly they have clearly been focusing their manufacturing efforts there.   Since the adult medicine can be adapated for children this is not a serious problem.  But still Tamiful manufacturers should get on the ball.