Virginia teen suffers rare illness...
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| Thu, 11-12-2009 - 3:51am |
Boy diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, but CDC says no clear link
Jordan McFarland, 14, was hospitalized for five days after coming down with Guillain-Barre syndrome hours after receiving a vaccination for H1N1.
By JoNel Aleccia
Health writer
Nov. 11, 2009
A 14-year-old Virginia boy is weak and struggling to walk after coming down with a reported case of Guillain-Barre syndrome within hours after receiving the H1N1 vaccine for swine flu.
Jordan McFarland, a high school athlete from Alexandria, Va., left Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children Tuesday night in a wheelchair nearly a week after developing severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs following a swine flu shot. He will likely need the assistance of a walker for four to six weeks, plus extensive physical therapy.
“The doctor said I’ll recover fully, but it’s going to take some time,” the teenager said.
Jordan is among the first people in the nation to report developing the potentially life-threatening muscle disorder after receiving the H1N1 vaccine this fall. His alarming reaction was submitted via msnbc.com’s reader reporting tool, First Person, by his stepmother, Arlene Connin.
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DH and I had all the symptoms and fevers of 103+ for 3 days and DH also had a secondary pneumonia infection with lots of lovely bloody sputum (though antibiotics cleared it without hospitalization).. we weren't tested b/c we didn't go to the hospital .. but both of us are rarely sick and if we are it's usually just a head cold at some point during the winter.
Fortunately, Elijah only had a runny nose, and no temp .. just a couple nights with frequent waking and extra fussiness! :)
I'd be interested in having a titer done .. just to know if we had some other nasty bug, or if it really was H1N1.
" since the CDC isn't tracking H1N1 cases anymore .. sooo .. we won't ever really know how effective the vaccine is .. nor will we really know how many people contracted the virus .. so we cannot really compare it to other flu seasons .. "
Gonna put on a tinhat now... but this really annoys me. The fact the Canadian and US governments are not tracking anymore.
We also had all the symptoms of H1N1 in our household, spent a couple of days sleeping off with a fever, aches, etc. Called the Doctor who said they aren't testing and to just stay home. When Kiera got sick we took her in also and I couldn't even get her swabbed and she's 5. Other than missing a week and a bit of work we are all fine.
So you're right no one is testing - so how can we compare or figure out how effective the vaccine is?
"Gonna put on a tinhat now... but this really annoys me. The fact the Canadian and US governments are not tracking anymore."
If they tracked cases then they couldn't get away with the lies. Besides, the test had so many false positives that it's basically deemed it useless. Or the test they were using was - the more expensive test wasn't performed in most cases due to cost from what I understand. But I bet they knew all that from the get-go.
@serenitysmum
Sorry you didn't read the article, I thought it was quite interesting.
I believe the problem is false negatives, also .. that is what we most commonly see @ the hospital I work at .. negative on the rapid flu test, but the respiratory viral panel that is mailed away often comes back positive.
Per infectious disease @ the facility I work at, if a patient is admitted and tested with the rapid flu test, they are to remain on droplet precautions until the RVP comes back negative. We've had a few cases for Influenza A that the Qflu came back negative but the RVP was positive.
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Well -- it would be a more complicated test .. much more time consuming and expensive. Using a blood sample a gel electrophoresis could be run and stained alongside a known positive H1N1 sample to see if they match up .. or an ELISA assay could probably be done with a sample of your blood against a known positive .. either way -- they are expensive tests and no doctor would go ordering them when there is no reason for it. Most places probably don't even offer it as a testing option -- I'm thinking more from the point of view of running your own experiment in a lab .. DH used to work in a lab where they're developing an HIV vaccine -- they routinely injected rabbits with a DNA vaccine and then tested antibody response .. DH always wondered if he'd have a positive antibody response b/c of his close work with all of that material. He never did test his own blood -- but we talked about it often :-p
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