Yes, RSV is a very common childhood illness.  It is the most common "cold" in small children and studies indicate that most children have had RSV before the age of 4 - some may not have even realized it.  It is those with smaller airways that are more suspectible to complications.  It is mostly in the upper airways and lots of kids, especially babies will need "puffers" to help them along while they are fighting it.  It is almost an enivitable for a child to pick this up at some point.  It is unfortunate though for those that have a hard time with it.  Hope your child gets over this soon.

Same story here -- Andrew had it long before cancer, as a newborn (9 days old) -- probably caught it from my other son who was three at the time and had what we thought was just a little cold. Andrew had a fever and a cough, and it turned into pneumonia pretty quickly. Because he was so new, we were in the hospital for a few weeks and then he was on neb treatments and oxygen for quite awhile. It took some time, but even as an itty-bitty little guy he recovered just fine. I hope Peter feels better soon and you can all get back home!

Kristen

Bridget,

Sorry to hear your son is fighting off RSV. Yes, we've had experience with it, with cancer. It's what actually brought Domenic into the hospital in the first place and was in turn diagnosed with ALL. He was in isolation as well, but once he started treatment and was feeling better, he was released from hospital after 7 days. Even at that early stage of diagnosis, they didn't delay the start of chemo even though he was in really rough shape. I was scared about this but they put him on antibiotics and said the chemo wouldn't put him in a worst position. They wanted to get started with treatment right away.

RSV in healthy children doesn't seem any different than a regular cold but to those who are immunocompromized, babies under 6 months who were premies are at the greatest risk of developing complications. From our experience, it was scary but we were also reassured that Domenic would be okay. Once Domenic's counts started to climb, his cough seemed to disappear, along with runny nose and cold like symptoms.

I hope Peter is feeling better soon, and that his counts come up instead of continuing to drop.

Claire