Roehl_JC
Moderator
SPOKANE - The seasonal flu season hasn't begun yet the CDC says 41 states are already reporting wide spread flu activity. In Spokane doctors offices are so busy handling flu related calls and visits that people are now turning to emergency rooms for care.
If you head to the ER for care be prepared to wait. At night the wait to see a doctor is typically three hours as people are coming in by the dozens with a range of flu-like symptoms. Nurses are seeing babies, kids, teenagers and adults all worried about swine flu.
Typically the pediatric emergency room sees around 50 patients in a 24 hour period but over this last weekend they saw nearly 90.
"That's huge that's huge we are only a 13 bed unit," Nurse Pam Sheldon said.
Sheldon is the nurse manager in the pediatric ER and she says she has never seen a flu season like this one.
"Every day it changes. You go to the CDC website and it changes on a daily basis and so I think its the unknown we don't know if its going to mutate or how it looks," Sheldon said.
Shantal Fisher was in the ER Monday with her three daughters and one of them isn't feeling well.
"She just started getting sick this morning and Iam not chancing it I am bringing her straight in to see what it is," Shantal said.
Shantal didn't expect to be one of many sitting in the ER Monday afternoon
"When I came in it was overwhelming to everybody, everybody with there masks on, realizing how serious it is," she said.
If you look around an ER these days more people than not are wearing a masks, in some cases not because they are sick but because they don't want to get sick
"There are a lot of concerns because it's a new strain," Pam Sheldon said.
A new strain of flu with a lot of uncertainties has doctors and nurses preparing for a long flu season.
http://www.kxly.com/Global/story.asp?S=11342407
If you head to the ER for care be prepared to wait. At night the wait to see a doctor is typically three hours as people are coming in by the dozens with a range of flu-like symptoms. Nurses are seeing babies, kids, teenagers and adults all worried about swine flu.
Typically the pediatric emergency room sees around 50 patients in a 24 hour period but over this last weekend they saw nearly 90.
"That's huge that's huge we are only a 13 bed unit," Nurse Pam Sheldon said.
Sheldon is the nurse manager in the pediatric ER and she says she has never seen a flu season like this one.
"Every day it changes. You go to the CDC website and it changes on a daily basis and so I think its the unknown we don't know if its going to mutate or how it looks," Sheldon said.
Shantal Fisher was in the ER Monday with her three daughters and one of them isn't feeling well.
"She just started getting sick this morning and Iam not chancing it I am bringing her straight in to see what it is," Shantal said.
Shantal didn't expect to be one of many sitting in the ER Monday afternoon
"When I came in it was overwhelming to everybody, everybody with there masks on, realizing how serious it is," she said.
If you look around an ER these days more people than not are wearing a masks, in some cases not because they are sick but because they don't want to get sick
"There are a lot of concerns because it's a new strain," Pam Sheldon said.
A new strain of flu with a lot of uncertainties has doctors and nurses preparing for a long flu season.
http://www.kxly.com/Global/story.asp?S=11342407