Parents!!!
This is for you--please read carefully!!!!
We have had a number of students who have gotten ill from a cold which turned into pneumonia.
Another debate student was identified with pneumonia last evening by a doctor. For some, the pneumonia has been mild enough to allow the student to attend school. For many others, it has been severe enough to miss school and require hospital grade antibiotics.
The general progression of this particular bug has been: catch a cold and it goes away in 4 or so days and reappears with a severe cough (mostly throat coughing) about a week or 10 days later. For some it started out as a flu with severe vomiting. For some the second wave came with a severe fever. After a week or so of the second wave...the cough migrates into the chest. By then, pneumonia has set in. Total sick time is about 6-7 weeks with this bug!
I have suggested over the past 6-8 weeks a number of students see a doctor...most didn't and then got really sick. In a couple of cases, I have even called parents and suggested seeing a doctor and the result was pneumonia.
I am writing this because over half of the team has not been ill from this slow moving bug.
If your student catches a cold, I am suggesting a closer monitoring than normal. Anything beyond a normal cold probably ought to be seen by a doctor. For some students this has meant three trips to a doctor before it was discovered. If you go to the doctor, tell the doc what is going on within the program so they can be as proactive as possible.
I haven't counted but I would guess we have had 15 plus of us with this bug (including coaches). We have had 5 cases that I would consider very serious including one resulting in a collapsed lung.
Last night's return of the bug tells me we aren't done with it yet. I had been hoping this had gone away but it hasn't. Please be proactive if your student gets ill--I sure wouldn't want anyone else to suffer through this the way some have.
