Crystal Emery being treated in the hospital.
Every year you hear “Get your flu shot.” You see the signs in your local pharmacies, outside general stores, and at your office saying, “Flu Shots Here.” Every year, you see commercials about the flu and its effects on young people and older people. I had the most unfortunate experience to be a victim to the flu and ended up in a hospital crowded with other victims.
I got my flu shot, the same as I do every year.
This year, however, Sean, my dear brother, came home from work with the flu. He recovered from the first, mild version of the virus, but after two weeks, he returned to work and – because the place where he works could easily be called a breeding ground for germs — he was promptly reinfected with a stronger strain.
That’s the one that I caught.
For weeks I labored on, fighting the feeling of having my whole body placed in a vice, fighting just to breathe. After three weeks in bed, I was rushed to the hospital.
In the emergency room, the doctors delivered an alarming prognosis: the lower lobes of my lungs had collapsed.
I am a quadriplegic – so I have to be exceedingly careful when it comes to germs. Any hospital visit can be potentially fatal. Even a cold can lay me low, but while I’ve experienced some pretty severe colds and faced my share of health crises, I had no idea what the flu really does to your body.
The Center for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) defines influenza (also known as flu) as “a contagious respiratory illness caused by flu viruses. It can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead to death.” While the initial symptoms (cough, fever, runny nose, fatigue) may resemble the common cold, they come on faster and far more severe. While muscle aches and headaches brought on from the common cold are slight and only occasional, muscle aches and headaches brought on by influenza are persistent and severe.
“Sinus and ear infections are examples of moderate complications from flu, while pneumonia is a serious flu complication that can result from either influenza virus infection alone or from co-infection of flu virus and bacteria,” according to the CDC. “Other possible serious complications triggered by flu can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscle (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure (for example, respiratory and kidney failure). Flu virus infection of the respiratory tract can trigger an extreme inflammatory response in the body and can lead to sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to infection.”
People die from the flu. So far a total of 29 deaths have reported in Connecticut during this flu season, according to the state Department of Health (DPH). Of the 29 total reported flu-associated deaths, 17 occurred in persons less than 65 years of age, 9 in persons 50 – 64 years of age, and 3 in persons 25 – 49 years of age. This is an improvement on last year’s grim statistics, where a 97 total influenza associated deaths had been reported during the 2017 – 2018 flu season.
This year there have been 4,540 laboratory-confirmed cases this year in New Haven alone — a number that has increased rapidly in the last few weeks. I have witnessed this increase in cases firsthand.
While I was in the emergency room, it became overcrowded. You hear many nightmare stories about the violence in New Haven – but that’s not the reason the ER was packed. It seemed no one was at Yale-New Haven hospital because of a gunshot or an accident, but that they were all there because of the flu.
According to the DPH, New Haven has seen a total of 1,668 confirmed hospitalized influenza patients admitted during the current season (August 26 to February 16, 2019).
I am sure I am one of those 1,668 patients counted.
We are still in the middle of a flu epidemic and New Haven. You have to protect yourself. You have to follow preventive procedures, because the flu kills.
“But Crystal,” you may ask, “didn’t you have your flu shot? Didn’t you get it anyway?”
Yes, I did, but the CDC notes: “A 2018 study showed that among adults hospitalized with flu, vaccinated patients were 59 percent less likely to be admitted to the ICU than those who had not been vaccinated. Among adults in the ICU with flu, vaccinated patients on average spent 4 fewer days in the hospital than those who were not vaccinated.”
What’s more, those same studies show that the flu vaccine increased survivability among older patients, as well as patients with chronic illnesseses – who are most vulnerable to complications.
I spent ten days in the hospital with the flu. If I hadn’t gotten the flu shot, it may have been 14 days, a month, or I could have died. As a woman who deals with not one, but two chronic illness, I could have very easily been one of the fatalities this year.
The worsening of already existing conditions are just some of the noted symptoms in adults. The flu destroys your ability to think, move, and even breathe.
Why am I sharing this story with you? Because it’s easy for a healthy, able-bodied person to take for granted what could quite literally kill them. I had a friend die from the flu. I’ve had friends die from pneumonia. These were not quadriplegics; these were able-bodied people, who could never have imagined losing their lives to something that we often think of as an inconvenience at best. The cold and the flu are not interchangeable, and every year we forget that.
This year’s flu outbreak is widespread, according to reports from Connecticut’s Department of Health (DPH), reflecting a national rise of cases in the general population. What’s more, the percentage of people nationally seeing their health care provider with influenza symptoms is currently 4.8 percent, above the national baseline of 2.2 percent.
I am grateful for the care that I received at Yale-New Haven Hospital, but believe me, nobody wants to spend time in the hospital, and nobody wants the flu. We’re still in the grips of the flu epidemic. Don’t let yourself be the next victim.