Post by Dusty on Mar 2, 2019 9:36:59 GMT -5
I have posted here before, but now am looking for others who have been through the q fever journey. I test every cow that comes through our place and it saved my life. I was doctoring a cow for a neighbor on our place, in our q pen and tested. She came back positive for q fever. State Vet, public health and brand inspector all became involved. We had had all of our cows tested and found negative every year, tested all our herd again and all negative. State Vet and public health all declared we were safe and our cows are safe (we still will test every 6 months)
Now I used to be a vet tech, and used gloves but not a mask. Use a mask folks. She left the end of June, in July about 4 weeks later we all came down with the "flu". Except my housebound daughter who drank her milk was doesn't go out much. C burnetti (Q fever) is carried in the dust; and usually after a birth. She didn't birth here so I did not think too much about it.
In Dec a chronic cough that had just been annoying since July turned into pneumonia. At that time we got the entire family tested. I had an extremely high titer (800) that meant an active case, my husband was just exposed (100).
My daughter who drank her milk was negative.
I have been literally fighting for my life ever since. Severe cough and reoccurring pneumonia, doing an echo soon to see if I have endocarditis. SEvere headaches, malaise, fatigue to the point I can't do housework let alone milk.
If someone says you likely have been exposed so won't get it (I have been milking cows 45 years); or that it only causes a flu, (while true in most cases, if you are the one that gets sick it is not helpful, 68% of cases that do get sick get hospitalized; as I should have been had we not been in a backwoods county), there is no need to test, (had I NOT tested I would be dead. Only the fact I asked my doctor to test gave them the right medicine to treat me; altho this backwoods doc did not feel it was a real threat to my health. He did nto give me a long enough doxy treatment and combined it with another med that decreased it's effectiveness) I finally saw infectious disease (their last patient with Q fever died) and I should have been treated 3 months ago. He thinks I am in an extended phase of acute Q fever, but am headed into the chronic stage. 2 years of antibiotic "cocktails" will need to be done and perhaps open heart surgery to repair any heart damage to valves.
What Is YOUR story? did you get better? how long did it take? RAWMI has totally brushed this off as not necessary to test for. Nonsense; as long as we keep our heads in the sand this will become more and more prevalent. 45 states are mandatory reporting, yet few are required testing.
Now I used to be a vet tech, and used gloves but not a mask. Use a mask folks. She left the end of June, in July about 4 weeks later we all came down with the "flu". Except my housebound daughter who drank her milk was doesn't go out much. C burnetti (Q fever) is carried in the dust; and usually after a birth. She didn't birth here so I did not think too much about it.
In Dec a chronic cough that had just been annoying since July turned into pneumonia. At that time we got the entire family tested. I had an extremely high titer (800) that meant an active case, my husband was just exposed (100).
My daughter who drank her milk was negative.
I have been literally fighting for my life ever since. Severe cough and reoccurring pneumonia, doing an echo soon to see if I have endocarditis. SEvere headaches, malaise, fatigue to the point I can't do housework let alone milk.
If someone says you likely have been exposed so won't get it (I have been milking cows 45 years); or that it only causes a flu, (while true in most cases, if you are the one that gets sick it is not helpful, 68% of cases that do get sick get hospitalized; as I should have been had we not been in a backwoods county), there is no need to test, (had I NOT tested I would be dead. Only the fact I asked my doctor to test gave them the right medicine to treat me; altho this backwoods doc did not feel it was a real threat to my health. He did nto give me a long enough doxy treatment and combined it with another med that decreased it's effectiveness) I finally saw infectious disease (their last patient with Q fever died) and I should have been treated 3 months ago. He thinks I am in an extended phase of acute Q fever, but am headed into the chronic stage. 2 years of antibiotic "cocktails" will need to be done and perhaps open heart surgery to repair any heart damage to valves.
What Is YOUR story? did you get better? how long did it take? RAWMI has totally brushed this off as not necessary to test for. Nonsense; as long as we keep our heads in the sand this will become more and more prevalent. 45 states are mandatory reporting, yet few are required testing.