Caitlyn’s Fight with Swine Flu

TIME FOR AN UPDATE:  I received an e-mail from my friend Sharon this morning. Caitlyn is now out of danger of dying from the swine flu, and is so well she will be going home tomorrow. I will be walking on the clouds for the rest of the day for sure. Thanks for all the prayers, and thanks to the wonderful doctors at St. Jude who cared and offered their expert advice on treatment for Caitlyn. Love you all. May God bless each of you in a very special way for your kind and caring hearts.

Isn’t it amazing how you hear statistics, but until you come face to face with just one of these they sometimes do not affect you. I heard the statistics on the news this morning — “the swine flu is now in 48 states, and is reported to have taken over 1,000 lives so far.”

I received an e-mail from a dear animal rescue friend named Sharon on Thursday of this week. She was asking for prayers for a little 9-year-old girl named Caitlyn who is dying with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia complications from the swine flu. Caitlyn lives in Indianopolis, and her grandmother is a friend of Sharon’s. Sharon was asking for prayers that this little girl might somehow make it.

By the afternoon, it had hit me. My mind finally started to work. “Hey dummy Kathy, you know two of the most world-renouned doctors and researchers in the world who specialize in Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and influenza.” I quickly shot an e-mail off to both, and within an hour or so had some very valuable information to hopefully help Caitlyn.

One of the treatments recommended by the influenza doctor was two new IV treatments of drugs which seem to be quite successful. He sent me the contact information so Caitlyn’s pediatricians could contact the FDA immediately for use of these drugs on an emergency use basis.

http://sarugu.com/2009/08/18/swine-flu-pictures/

Now the next hurdle. I had to get this information to Sharon immediately. I had always communicated with Sharon by blog and e-mails, so I did not have a telephone number. I did, however, know she lives in Detroit, Michigan. I did a search on the internet, and I really lucked out. The second person I contacted was the Sharon I was looking for. She seemed uncertain who I was until I said, “I’m Kathleen from the Animal House blog — Tinkerbell’s momma.” As soon as I said Tinkerbell’s momma, the light went off in Detroit! Nice to be known by your dog, huh?

She immediately contacted Caitlyn’s family, and they delivered the e-mails with this information to the doctor’s office personally early yesterday morning. I am hoping and praying by now Caitlyn is receiving this treatment, and it will save her little life. As a grandmother myself with my beautiful little Mackenzie Rhapsody, all I could think of was the pain this poor lady was going through trying to save her precious granddaughter somehow.

Ask me if it was an accident Sharon e-mailed me. I will tell you in my honest opinion, “No, absolutely not. God put Sharon and I together at this very time because of the resources He could guide me to through these incredible researchers.” Both of these gentlemen have been dear friends of mine for the entire 30 years I have worked at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and there is absolutely no one I respect more than these two men who I have worked with for so long.

We are all praying hard for Caitlyn and would appreciate others’ prayers as well, but I truly believe she will be okay after getting this help from my friends. I believe this was God’s way of answering our prayers.

This morning we received this update, which gave me much hope:

She had an x-ray this morning that showed some improvement. I passed the info you gave me on to her pediatrician’s office myself. What they do with it remains to be seen. They did seem to be really enthusiastic to get it. I had called ahead, and told them I was bringing it.

When I visited her around 3:00 pm the IV fluids were still in the room, but not connected to her. She was still getting the antibiotics today.

Thank you so much for your help. I’ll let you know how she’s doing.

So this weekend I will be wearing my e-mail out watching for Caitlyn updates. I will let everyone know how she is doing as I hear. In the meantime I am praying hard in that old Southern Baptist tradition, and “Keeping the Faith too.”

CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discover in U.S. Pig Factories

by Michael Greger, M.D.
http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

Crowded conditions on factory farms create breeding grounds for new viruses. ©iStockphoto

This genetic fingerprint, first released by Columbia University’s Center for Computation Biology and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,[1] has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization, and considered the “godfather of flu research,”[2] is reported as saying “The triple reassortant in pigs [first discovered in the U.S. in 1998] seems to be the precursor.”