So stressed about the possible side effects my little girl may suffer.......

[devotion]

I am so torn about what to do.

When the doc saw her Mon night she advised me to give it to her straight away as she was in a bad way and she warned me their little lungs can fill so quickly. So we rushed and gave her the first dose. When she woke the next morning I gave her a second dose and then she was good as new.

I was gutted and wished I had waited until teh next day to see if it was going to be mild like it is. I spoke to my gp and he said he would have told me to wait too but now that I have started it i need to continue because it could come back and be hard to control her temperature and if she gets swine flu again and its a nasty one then tamiflu wont work on her.

I've read so much awful stuff and i feel like i'm giving my little one this nasty drug and i dont know what effect its going to have - even long term???

She has had four doses now, two a day and so has three days left of it!

So far no side effects but they say day three is when you really see the side effects.

I'm just so angry that i have been made to gamble my daughters health. that out if hours gp should have said to wait until the morning, she has been ill less then 12 hours!

you can give tamiflu up to 48 hours.

i wished so much i had waited, she most prob did not even have swine flu too which makes it even worse.

i am dreading tomorroas as my gp warned me that day 3 is the day side effects really kick in.

please tell me i am doing the right thing and that i am not harming my little precious girl.

if anyone else becomes ill in my house we will be waiting at least 24 hours!

sorry should read

I'm just so angry that i have been made to gamble my daughters health. that out-of-hours GP should have said to wait until the morning, she had been ill less then 12 hours when i was told to give her the tamiflu!

Yes, you are doing the right thing. Stopping them now would be worse than continuing, if the flu is not yet gone it may come back stronger.

www.tamiflu.com/sideeffects.aspx

why are you freaking out?

the side effects are mild to moderate nausea / vomiting (so you give her a bucket it's only sick and she'll get over it)

potential confusion after a dose (so you watch her)

allergic reactions - if she's tolerated it fine so far she'll be fine

every drug has potential side effects

some drugs have definite side effects and always has to be judged on a risk of taking vs risk of not taking basis

I think you should calm down

Hi, on the leaflet with our tamiflu it said that side effects usually occur with the first two doses - so I am not sure why your GP says day three???

I can only talk from personal experience, my DH and DD (3 yo) did not have ANY side effects at all, definitely believe that it helped DH to bring temperature down and getting better a lot quicker, DD and myself did not get swine flu whilst being in close contact obviously with DH, so again I believe tamiflu prevented it from spreading to us. I possibly had a side effect (bad headache for a few days) but it could equally have been stress. I would definitely take tamiflu again and give it to my dd again if we were to have suspeced swine flu.

Hope she gets better soon, don't forget you are doing the best you can, don't blame yourself you are not to blame for anything.

All the best.

we've all had tamiflu here and never had any symptoms hun wouldn't panic, plus you've already started it now so there's no point beating yourself up. It's so hard to know what to do for the best I know, wish they would swab and properly diagnose but is so much of it about that would be hard. It's left to us Mums to decide what's best - big responsibility. How old is she? Mine are 3 and 4.

I had the opposite happen to me, my eldest had relatively mild symptoms sore throat/headache/temperature but under control but she had a cough and a wheeze that you could hear every time she breathed in and out - for that reason I took her to the docs. He thought it was tonsilitis but was worried about the wheeze so gave her an inhaler. Later he rang and said he wasn't happy to leave the wheeze and wanted her to take tamiflu. I did reluctantly.

Later that night she had what was like an accute asthma attack and was confirmed as having a 'flu induced wheeze' which was treated with steroids and an inhaler, she's fine now off the inhaler and everything.

My youngest had a milder dose altogether of the SF and I was really poorly with it.

The other thing about tamiflu is if the virus reproduces less because of it the rest of the house hold are less likely to get the SF and they may not be as lucky to have such a mild dose as your little one.

Hope she's ok soon, would try not to worry. Did you see the news saying kids had had nightmares etc? Thought thats what may have made you panic, if they do get funny symptoms you should contact your GP but my girls were fine. A very high temperature and fever can cause people to hallucinate or be delirious so is hard to say what is the flu and what is the tamiflu x

Thank you - you've all made me feel so much better.

I'm pregnant at the moment and I am always over the top when pregnant, get really protective.

It was the news on the radio that started it then I googled (bad idea) and opened a whole page of terrifying experiences people had suffered from taking tamiflu - so that didnt help.

The fact that my daughter is running around happy as a lark, fresh faced and eating well I know she must not of had swine flu?

one wed all day she had this sky high persistent fever and was stuck to the couch and only two days later she is totally fine.

Surely she would still be ill?

Anyway i guess I have to finish this course now.

But thank you for making me feel better x

yummymummy310 - sorry to hear your little girl had to go through that.

My little girl is three.

I looked up what had been found with reactions to tamiflu and it seemed it was mostly nausea, sickness and heachaches. Even with the more serious symptoms they didn't seem too bad and stopped after the drug was stopped, obviously not ideal having insomnia, lack of concentration or nitemares but if you were likely to be badly affected by the swine flu may be a small price to pay for 5 days to avoid persistant problems/comlications with swine flu.

I didn't like taking it or giving it to my kids but the SF scared me too so what do you do?

Must admitt think I did get some insomnia as couldn't sleep very well even though was really poorly and very tired but then I was really poorly so it could've been that keeping me awake Who knows!

If I were you would just be glad she's so happy today and look after you and your bump x

i know I am glad she is ok.

plus after all i have read i am lucky to have had no problems getting the tamiflu in her.

x

that's v true!!I wasted hours trying to get it into her before I started hiding it in my eldests icecream, my youngest took it no probs tho x

well thought it was too good to be true, she vomited today once but seems fine now, she only has one more dose tonight and one in the morning.

she is suspicious of everthing we are offering her. bless her she is never going to trust me again.

hopefully that will be just one epsiode of get vomiting.

x