how do we know if it's swine flu or "regular" flu then?

[lia66]

Have got very poorly 15 yr dd, and ds7 also poorly with flu symptoms, high temp, headaches, sleeping all time, coughing, achy bodies, not eating, genarally unwell.

How do we know if it's swine flu or not and what do we do difrferently if it is? (if anything)

Have looked on ifo website and they both have symptoms but that could be plain flu also couldnt it?

Doesn't make any difference wrt treatment.

Hope you are well soon - flu is rotten

I don't think you can tell.

Well swine flu is flu, just a different strain. There are lots of strains. They have the same symptoms and the same recovery, etc.

The only way to know for sure is to be tested.

Flu is a horrid illness regardless of the strain.

ok, thank you, thats ok then. am just treating with fluids, flu sachet things for older dd, and calpol for ds.

Hope it doesn't last too long, or the others get it in rotation.

I don't think it matters. Poor them - and you. Hope they\re better soon.

It only matters if you want tamiflu - which you need to start on within 48 hours of flu starting. The GP can do a quick on the spot test (throat or nose swab) to determine whether it is influenze A or B, if it is A it could be swine flu and some GPs now offer tamiflu in that case.

When DH had swine flu last year, (was confirmed after he had recovered because they sent swab to lab which takes a week or 10 days to find out), there were two differences with normal flu:

• temperature was very high (40 plus degrees celcius) and did not come down with maximum doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol
• he was totally exhausted, too tired to even read a news paper

Hope you are all okay.

Tamiflu is only for people in the high risk groups at the moment, and it doesn't matter whether it's H3n2 or H1N1.

Those point-of-care tests are not very sensitive, so no-one should be basing treatment on the results. The NICE guidelines allow for treatment on symptomatic grounds.

hey musukebba - I've been wondering how you are.

I and DS had swine flu (both diagnosed from swabs) last year, I'm just recovering from a 10 day bout of flu and DS has just gone down with what looks like flu (poor boy)! I certainly felt as bad as I did last year, but my temp wasn't as high. I phoned my GP after 5 days as I was coughing so much my ribs ached all the time and I thought that maybe I might have something bronchial rather than flu, but he told me that he had a huge amount of patients in my age group with flu symptoms at the moment.

DS had tamiflu last year, but I decided not to. Like last year, I treated myself with paracetamol and fluids, and am doing the same for DS.

Maybe I should consider a flu jab for next year.....!

Flu is just horrible, I do hope your DC are feeling better.