My 13yo daughter recently had COVID19! Here is a run-down of our experiences with the illness and treatment.
How Did My Daughter Contract COVID19?
We live in New Mexico, which is one of the strictest states in the country for COVID19 restrictions. I've been very vocal about the local governmental overreach (the New Mexico government is now requiring people to wear masks when they go for walks, even in 100+ degree F heat!), but nonetheless we've still been fairly cautious and mostly staying at home.
In the 2 weeks before my daughter Alina started showing symptoms, the only people she had spent time around were my mom, our elderly neighbor, and one other family. Alina (and my son Ian) had played with kids from the other family outdoors for about an hour, and one of those kids came over to our house to play for a few hours once/week.
None of the people Alina was around have showed any signs of illness. We were scratching our heads trying to figure out how Alina caught COVID19, and the only scenario that makes sense is that the kids from the other family were carrying asymptomatically. That other family has had more exposure than our family has, since the mom taught several preschooler classes in June in their home (with 5 kids per class and sanitizing between classes), plus her kids attended small gymnastics classes in June. Based on Alina's limited exposure, I'm thinking that transmission must have happened during the once/week playdate.
My Daughter's Susceptibility
When she was really young, my daughter Alina had a compromised immune system. She got sick very frequently, and her illnesses were much more severe than they were for others. There was no such thing as "just a cold," since every illness resulted in high fever for days. We had many scary nights, and every time Alina got sick she'd have a lingering cough for weeks, such that she was coughing about half of the time.
Through constitutional homeopathic treatment, Alina's immune system has been strengthened dramatically over the last many years. She gets sick much less frequently and with much less severity now. (This is part of why I ended up becoming a homeopath myself, since I saw firsthand the tremendous health improvements it produced in my daughter's health.)
Although her immune system is much improved now compared to when she was much younger, Alina does still tend to get sick a little more frequently and has somewhat stronger symptoms when she gets sick than most kids do. So she may be somewhat representative of what the illness would look like in kids who don't have a very mild presentation.
My Daughter's COVID19 Progression
Alina's illness started with a week of very mild symptoms. Her symptoms were so mild that we had no idea what was going on, because she was literally just coughing about once or twice a day with no other symptoms. This was happening at a time when there was a lot of smoke in the air from wildfires, so we thought she was just coughing a little from the smoke. During this time, we did not do anything to try to limit contact/spread, because we had no idea it was actually COVID19.
Around Day 5, Alina started coughing a little bit more in the evening. Keeping in mind the top 5 homeopathic remedies for coronavirus, I gave a dry dose of Lycopodium clavatum 30c (because the only thing I had to prescribe on was that the cough seemed worse after waking and from 4-8pm, which are Lycopodium's keynote aggravation times). The cough settled right back down after the dose.
The same thing happened again the next night. Remedy given again, and same results.
Around Day 6-8, COVID19 commonly gets worse. I had no idea that was the typical illness progression, but it is apparently the known pattern for it. On Day 7, Alina's occasional cough seemed to be getting slightly harder; then in the evening, within just about an hour, Alina suddenly got much worse, coughing a lot and coughing hard (leading to vomiting). She was chilly, miserable, weeping, not wanting to talk, and sensitive to light. No fever. I administered a wet dose of Lycopodium and within an hour she was feeling much better, only coughing occasionally and feeling chipper. She started exhibiting weird symptoms: swelling of her eyelids and forehead, swollen red finger joints. These symptoms led me to figure out exactly what we were dealing with.
Over the next couple days, Alina needed doses of Lycopodium about every 4-6 hours, when the cough would start to increase. The cough calmed back down to only occasional after each dose of remedy. She continued to exhibit weird symptoms: her bottom lip swelled up, there was swelling of her finger and toe joints, she had transient itchy rashes. She may have had a very low fever on and off for a couple days, but it was hard to tell, since the ear thermometer never went over 99.7 (and ear temperatures are generally higher than oral temperatures).
Besides that short period of time on Day 7 before I administered the Lycopodium dose, Alina never actually felt very bad during this illness. She'd start feeling a bit worse when her cough would ramp up, but then she'd have another dose and go right back to feeling happy and chipper.
From Day 8 onward, in addition to using the homeopathic Lycopodium remedy, Alina also spent ~10 minutes sunbathing each day (for Vitamin D) and had extra vitamin C (in the form of diluted fresh honey lemonade, plus one 500-mg Vitamin C pill stirred into applesauce). Her appetite was great throughout the whole illness. She spent Day 8 happily reading and playing games on the couch, but by the following day she was already spending some time off the couch playing quietly.
She was back to her normal activity level by Day 12, and only needed 2 doses of Lycopodium. On days 13-17, her activity level was normal and she was given a small Lycopodium dose for just a tiny amount of coughing. On day 18, I administered one dry dose of Sulphur 30c because there was still a very small amount of lingering cough (homeopathic Sulphur often works well at the end of many respiratory illnesses when there is a cough that lingers on after all other symptoms are resolved).
COVID19 Symptoms to Watch For
We've all seen the lists of COVID19 symptoms to watch for: dry cough, shortness of breath, fever, loss of smell/taste, etc. It is known that COVID19 is often quite mild for kids, so their symptoms may not be so obvious. Having witnessed my daughter's illness, I was able to see some more specific symptoms to watch for as well:
overall progression of illness, starting with dry cough only (typically no/minimal nose symptoms or sniffles)
initial mild stage lasting ~1 week
sudden worsening of respiratory symptoms around day 6-8
swollen face (eyes, forehead, lips)
swollen and/or red joints and bumps in the fingers, toes, and feet
itchy rash
The swelling and rash symptoms are apparently more common in kids specifically. Kids generally don't exhibit the loss of smell/taste with this illness. Alina never exhibited any shortness of breath, although it is possible she would have if I wasn't treating it homeopathically (especially considering that Lycopodium is especially indicated in COVID19 cases that progress to pneumonia). So I may have just caught her illness early enough that the lung involvement didn't get so severe.
Interesting Corroborations with COVID19 Science
There were a few interesting things in my daughter's COVID19 illness that corroborate recent COVID19 science.
Studies have indicated that many kids will be asymptomatic with COVID19. Although Alina presumably caught the illness from the kids in another family, none of those kids ever showed any signs of illness. My 10yo son Ian actually coughed a couple times one night (that was probably Day 1 for Alina), but he never coughed again after that. So he *may* have also had COVID19 at that time and been pretty much asymptomatic.
Just as the studies coming out of France/Denmark show, kids may not transmit this illness very well. No one that Alina was in contact with ever showed any symptoms of illness. (We did not do anything at all to prevent the spread for the first week of her illness, and this illness is considered to be most contagious during the early part of the illness. Once it became clear that Alina was actually ill, we did implement our usual illness protocol of her having her own bathroom, her own assigned spot to eat at the table, washing hands frequently, etc.) Alina even spent the night at my mom's house during that first week of very mild symptoms. I would presume that everyone in our family has been exposed, as well as my mom and that other 7-person-family, yet out of these 12 people, Alina is the only one to show any symptoms. This is very much in line with the CDC antibody studies which show that many more people have already "had" exposure to this illness than we can tell by looking at cases that developed into actual illness.
For Alina, compared to the flu, this illness had much less impact on her daily life and she felt much better (whereas when she has had the flu or even some colds, she is typically on the couch with a high fever for a few days). So her experience agrees with the assertion that this illness is relatively mild in kids. (Her illness certainly would have had more negative effects without homeopathic treatment, but that is true of the flu, too.)
Homeopathic remedies worked quite effectively for Alina's illness. The New England homeopath who developed the list of top 5 coronavirus remedies has treated many hundreds of cases thus far and none of them has had to be hospitalized. This is a dramatic reduction in the number of hospitalizations with homeopathic treatment. One of the keys to this success was starting treatment early and not waiting for symptoms to get really severe. For Alina's doses, I used my standard acute regimen of wet doses (from the 1st dilution) with 40-60 succussions before each dose, and ~1/4-1/2 tsp per dose. One thing that was interesting and different in this case (compared to other illnesses Alina has had in the past) was that I actually had to keep increasing the potency after every 4-6 doses when the remedy's positive effects were becoming less pronounced. I started with 30c potency, then moved to LM2, then LM4, then LM6, and finally LM7. Typically, I use only the 30c for illnesses in our household (and for most of my clients, too, although there are a few who do better with a 200c potency for illnesses).
Please Share Your Experience
I have shared all of these details in the hopes that they will be helpful to others. Have you had any experience with COVID19? Please share your experiences in the comments below.
Disclaimer
I am not a doctor or licensed healthcare professional. I am a homeopathic practitioner whose services are considered complementary and alternative by the state of New Mexico. The uses of homeopathic remedies described herein are provided for educational use only.
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