Warning: Do Not Take Aspirin If You Have the Flu

Twenty six years ago doctors didn't warn people to not take aspirin when you had the flu. It was common, in fact, to take aspirin. Today, we now know better.

In 1983, my sister was in tenth grade and I was in the seventh. Flu season had pretty much just started and my sister caught it early. Not knowing any better, my mom gave her some aspirin to help ease the achiness. After several days, her flu symptoms began to go away. She soon returned to school.

Not long after she returned to school after being out sick, she started behaving strangely. The school contacted my mom and she immediately picked her up and took her to the doctor.

Lea (an assumed name to protect her identity) had been saying strange things, such as a friend of hers was dead. Of course, the friend wasn't. She began to scream and act paranoid. It was so bad that the school officials feared for her safety and the safety of others.

The doctor had my sister placed right then in the hospital. Back then, the little hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas was not capable of handling a case like Lea's. She was soon sent to St. Vincent in Little Rock.

Not understanding what was going on, St. Vincent placed Lea in the "mental ward". The doctors seemed to think she had just flat gone crazy. She was acting that way, but that was not what was wrong with her.

The hospital only did mental evaluations of her. She stayed in the hospital for weeks being treated as a mentally unstable person. I remember the whole family had to start meeting with a psychologist. They thought our family was dysfunctional. It was a very depressing and sad time for our family.

The hospital started giving Lea some medicine without my parents' knowledge. The only way they found out was that my mother walked in one day while they were telling her to take her pills. To this day, I still do not know what they were giving her. Maybe sedatives to keep her calm.

I remember during this time Lea's behavior only got worse. She really frightened me. One time, while in the hospital, she opened up her suitcase and started tearing out the lining. I can still see my mother and how distraught she was about this.

There were so many other things that Lea did during this time that were totally out of character, but the hospital just kept treating her like she was crazy.

After about a month of this, for some reason, the doctors finally found out that Lea had too much fluid on the brain. They did a spinal tap to relieve it. Lea started acting more like herself. The irrational behavior faded. It wasn't long after that they were able to release her from the hospital and she returned to school.

It was a devastating time during my youth that still affects my family today. Lea has not had another episode of it, but at times, she still has trouble controlling her emotions. I believe that part of her brain was permanently damaged due to the fluid retention.

It not only affected her emotions, but her comprehension as well. She has a hard time understanding or just simply following along in a normal conversation. She is not mentally challenged, but just struggles a bit.

The doctors decided that it was the aspirin that had caused it. After doing some background work, they realized that she had had the flu and had been given aspirin. If they had only figured it out earlier, it would have saved my family a lot of grief.

After doing my own research, all these years later, I've discovered that what she could have had was Reye's Syndrome. If that's the case, we're lucky she survived it.

Or if it wasn't Reye's Syndrome, maybe it was hydrocephalus. Whatever it was, the damage was done.

Thank goodness that today, doctors are more aware of what happens when aspirin is taken with certain ailments. The public is warned and educated. Plus, we have the options of Tylenol and Motrin. But, we still have to be careful with taking those, as well.

Make sure that you know what can be taken with what ailment. Also be aware of how drugs interact with one another. Education is always the key to preventing disasters such as the one my family had to experience.