CNN
—
Jessica Richman felt fear wash over her – again.
In October, she saw her 3-year-old daughter, Layla, become abnormally lethargic, develop a high fever and start to have shortness of breath. It was a painful reminder of her other daughter, Cayden, who died of the flu in December 2014.
Cayden was the same age as Layla.
“It was very similar symptoms to Cayden. So, of course, I kicked it into high gear,” Richman said.
When Layla’s symptoms started on Halloween, Richman took her to an urgent care clinic in their hometown of Newport News, Virginia.
“His heart rate was high. Her fever was very high. They kept her there for most of the afternoon observing her,” Richman said. “I explained to the doctor who was there that I had lost a 3-year-old daughter to the flu, so it was very scary for me. He really took that to heart.
Layla’s medical team diagnosed her with the flu and gave her Motrin for her fever and the antiviral drug Tamiflu to treat the infection.
“She felt better pretty quickly, within 24 hours,” Richman said.
Richman’s experience during this flu season was drastically different from that of 2014, when she lost her beloved Cayden.
One key difference: Cayden was unvaccinated in 2014. Layla received her shot in September.
“I really think the vaccine played a big role,” said Richman, who is secretary of the nonprofit Families Fighting Flu.
Even though Layla fell ill when she encountered the flu virus weeks after the vaccination, “she recovered quickly,” Richman said, adding that no one else in their household – which also includes her husband , Matt, and their 6-year-old son, Parker – caught the flu from Layla.
All had been vaccinated before Layla’s disease.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that at least 16,000 people have died from the flu this season and that at least 79 deaths have occurred among children.
Seasonal influenza activity continues to be widespread in the United States, but has declined in most areas in recent weeks. Still, public health officials encourage people to get annual flu shots as the best way to protect against this virus.
Many people who don’t get the seasonal flu shot aren’t necessarily against the shot. Maybe they just didn’t have the time. This was the case for Cayden in 2014.
That year, Richman and Cayden’s father got a flu shot, but Cayden’s shot had to be postponed because she had a cold at the time.
“Because I was so misinformed at the time about the flu, I didn’t think it was super urgent to go and get the flu shot immediately as soon as she was better,” Richman said. “I kind of put it off.”
On a Thursday a few weeks later, Cayden was no longer chatty and bubbly as usual. The 3-year-old, affectionately nicknamed CadyBug, was tired and developed a cough. She stayed home after daycare with her father, and he took her to the pediatrician’s office.
The doctor thought Cayden’s symptoms were likely from a cold virus and sent her home without testing for the flu, Richman said.
The next morning, Cayden still had a fever. She was coughing and kept asking for water. Her father took her back to the pediatrician’s office but was sent home.
“No one tested her for the flu. No one seemed to think it was the flu,” Richman said. “She was sent home that Friday afternoon.”
When they returned home, Cayden’s symptoms worsened.
“She deteriorated very, very quickly. It was within hours,” Richman said. “It was very deep, shallow breaths. She was not breathing properly.
Richman said she was driving home from work when she received a chilling phone call from Cayden’s father: Cayden had stopped breathing during his nap. He had called 911. Richman arrived at her home to find emergency vehicles outside her house and paramedics working on Cayden.
“She could not be resuscitated at home,” Richman said. “During the ambulance ride, they didn’t tell me at the time that she couldn’t be resuscitated, but I could tell because I was traveling in an ambulance and there was no noise. So I I knew it was over.”
When Cayden died, her parents still didn’t know it was from the flu.
“It wasn’t until we received an autopsy that I clearly understood it was the flu that had caused her lungs to fill with mucus until she couldn’t breathe,” Richman said. . “I had no idea what happened until we got the autopsy.”
Before Cayden’s tragic death, his mother had no idea the flu could be fatal.
“I was completely stunned,” she said. “I had no idea this could ever happen.”
Nearly a decade later, Richman and his family get the flu shot every year in memory of Cayden. They wear pink and share posts on social media about it, using the hashtag #pinkforcadybug, as pink was Cayden’s favorite color.
The most common flu symptoms are fever, body aches and chills. In some cases, it can cause lower respiratory tract infections known as pneumonia or directly infect heart cells and brain cells, causing these organs to become inflamed, said Dr Tara Vijayan, an infectious disease physician at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California. , Los Angeles, said in an email.
She added that inflammation can lead to the death of the body’s own cells.
“More often, however, if the flu causes severe illness, it’s because it disrupts the lining of the airways, so the lungs become more susceptible to other bacterial pneumonias,” Vijayan said. “Generally, those who are unvaccinated and have multiple medical conditions or weakened immune systems are most at risk, but we have seen deaths in younger, healthy people.”
She added that older or pregnant people are also at high risk of complications.
Treating patients with severe flu is a frequent but challenging experience for Dr. Ali Khan, who specializes in internal medicine at one of Oak Street Health’s Primary Care Network sites in Chicago.
“It’s an incredibly difficult infection to monitor as a clinician,” Khan said, adding that influenza infections can turn deadly when a person gets a superimposed bacterial infection like pneumonia or develops severe sepsis.
“We welcome people who come to hospitals with seizures or with encephalitis caused by the flu. People who come in with major muscle injuries and breakdowns, like the ones you get when you’re pretty dehydrated and overtired,” he said. “Suffice it to say, I’ve seen this far too many times than I would have liked to see as a clinician.”
It’s not too late to get your flu shot this season if you haven’t, Khan said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. “Absolutely, you can still get vaccinated.”
Vijayan had similar feelings.
“Our flu rates were surprisingly high at the end of the fall and it seems to be leveling off, but I would be absolutely concerned about a further increase in cases this winter,” she said. “It’s absolutely not too late to get your flu shot.”
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