'Healthy' Cañon City mother now critically ill with H1N1 flu

A 22-year-old mother of two is critically ill at Penrose Hospital with complications related to H1N1, her family says.

Kayla Kammrad, of Cañon City, does not have a chronic medical condition and had been healthy prior to the flu’s onset, her father, Mike Williams, said Monday. She is on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma at Penrose’s Intensive Care Unit, where she’s been for nearly two weeks. Kammrad’s husband, Jeff, a corporal in the National Guard, was flown home last week from his deployment in Iraq. The couple, who were high school sweethearts, have two sons, a 4-year-old  and a 2-year-old.

Williams said his daughter was a high school basketball player and gymnast with none of the underlying medical conditions, such as asthma, diabetes or sickle-cell anemia, that have been linked to the most critical flu cases. Most people sickened by H1N1 do not need medical treatment, and most flu-related hospitalizations have occurred among people with chronic conditions and weakened immune systems.

Still, there have been hundreds like Kammrad, who, despite a seemingly clean bill of health, have been hit especially hard by H1N1. Last month the Adams County Coroner’s Office reported that a 25-year-old Commerce City man with no known underlying conditions died of swine flu.

“It doesn’t matter how healthy you are; you can very well wind up just like Kayla,” Williams said. He said her condition is life-threatening, with doctors characterizing it as hour-by-hour.

At first, Kammrad suspected she had a cold, Williams said. It worsened over the next several days. By the time she was admitted to St. Thomas More Hospital in Cañon City, she had a 105 degree fever. Her husband, was summoned home from Iraq because of the uncertainty of her survival, Williams said.

Williams said his daughter’s ordeal should serve as a lesson to others to take precautions and get vaccinated as soon as possible.

“It will just hit you and hit you quick, and the next thing you know you’re critical,” he said.

However, Kammrad would not have qualified for an H1N1 vaccine, based on Colorado’s current list of priority groups: preschool children ages 6 months through 4 years;  children and young adults ages 5 to 18 with chronic health conditions; health care workers with direct patient contact; pregnant women; and parents and caretakers for children younger than 6 months.

Vaccine against H1N1 has been slow to arrive, but several area health care providers have received at least some doses. The first publicly scheduled vaccination clinic in El Paso County is 10 a.m. Nov.11 at Coronado High School, 1590 W. Fillmore St.

An account to help the Kammrad family is being set up, but details were unavailable Monday.

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