Mother, 55, was left unable to walk or eat for FOUR DAYS after she caught 'Aussie flu' and was forced to rely on her daughter who took a week off to care for her
- Tina Knight, 55, relied on her daughter, Kady, to care for her for an entire week
- Bed-ridden Tina was even unable to wear a blanket because her skin was so sore
- She also struggled to breathe and swallow, forcing Kady, 29, to take her to A&E
- There, doctors revealed she had flu and advised her to return home to get well
A mother was left unable to walk or eat for four days after she caught the dreaded 'Aussie flu', her daughter claims.
Tina Knight, 55, relied on her daughter, Kady, to care for her for an entire week after the killer virus took hold of her body.
Bed-ridden Tina was unable to wear a blanket because her skin was so sore during her 10-day battle, which is finally showing signs of being over.
She also struggled to breathe and swallow, forcing Kady, 29, to take her to A&E with flu-like symptoms - despite official advice not to.
Nursery worker Kady, from Brighton, spent the whole of last week off work to look after her mother, who was 'frightened' by her symptoms.
It comes amid the rapid spread of flu in the UK, with the death toll across the home nations known to have hit 97.
The parents of an 18-year-old girl in Scotland, called Bethany Walker, attracted national attention when they revealed their daughter died from the flu last week.
More fatalities are expected in coming weeks, as aggressive 'Aussie' and 'Japanese' strains of flu continue to wreak havoc.
Tina Knight, 55, relied on her daughter, Kady, to care for her for an entire week after the killer virus took hold of her body (pictured together)
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Kady, who returned to work yesterday after her mother appeared, said: 'Even she looked frightened.
'She said to me she was actually really scared at one point because she had never been this ill before.'
Tina was struck down with flu on January 5. Her condition quickly deteriorated over that weekend.
Kady said: 'My mum's quite tough, she doesn't let things bring her down, she just carries on normally, but she had to go straight to bed.
'By day three or four she hadn't eaten. I went shopping and bought her some soup hoping she would be able to eat that.
'But her throat had gone really sore, she was struggling to breathe and swallow and couldn't have the soup.'
Nursery worker Kady, from Brighton, spent the whole of last week off work to look after her mother, who was 'frightened' by her symptoms
Kady also revealed her mother was rapidly switching between hot and cold and would get dizzy whenever she stood up to walk.
Alongside her flu-like symptoms, she suffered from stabbing pains in her chest - similar to a heart attack - and coughed up blood.
Kady said: 'Mum couldn't walk, and I was too scared to leave her. It was really scary at one point when she was struggling to breathe.'
Doctors have been unable to confirm what strain of flu Tina was struck down by, but it could be H3N2 - known as 'Aussie flu'.
Kady added: 'He [the GP] did say to us that it was probably Aussie flu because of how bad the symptoms were.'
She claims she has 'no idea how' she didn't catch the virus of her mother - even though she was quarantined upstairs.
Tina, who still has a bad cough, is 'finally getting better' - but her family have to keep a close eye on her to make sure she doesn't get worse.
The rocketing number of flu cases in the UK has been put down to a surge in two aggressive subtypes attacking the population simultaneously.
One includes the so-called 'Aussie flu', a strain of influenza A which triggered triple the number of expected cases in Australia during the country's winter.
Experts fear the virulent H3N2 strain, which has now reached the UK, could prove as deadly to humanity as the Hong Kong flu in 1968, which killed one million people.
The other is a strain of influenza B, called Yamagata and dubbed 'Japanese flu', which has been blamed for the majority of cases so far this winter.
Its rapid spread has raised concerns because it is not covered in a vaccine given to the elderly. However, experts claim it is less severe.
Usually, just one subtype, either influenza A or B, is responsible for the majority of cases. It spreads easily in the cold weather.
Similar laboratory figures for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are released later this week. They are expected to follow similar trends.
A precise toll is unavailable for Wales. Eight have died in intensive care units in Scotland and four in Northern Ireland. A total of 85 have died in England.
The flu outbreak is putting a huge strain on hospitals, with doctors warning the conditions in the NHS are the worst they have ever seen.
Patients are dying in the corridors of overcrowded A&E units because there are not enough beds, leading doctors warned in a letter to the Prime Minister last week.
Health bosses have blamed the rapidly escalating cases of flu for their controversial decision to cancel 55,000 operations last week.
The same move was also made by French officials as the European country battles an epidemic of 'exceptional magnitude'.
Nearly 12,000 people having been left hospitalised in France and more than 30 dead from the same strains of flu circulating the UK.
The Ministry of Health in France issued an alert about flu last week, warning that the outbreak has still yet to reach its peak.
It read: 'The influenza epidemic is of an exceptional magnitude, by the number of cases, which risks exceeding those of the last two years.'
Flu is also 'actively circulating' in Ireland, with less than ten people having lost their lives to the killer virus so far in this winter's outbreak.
And in the US, the flu is already gripping 36 states and has killed at least 100 people, according to data released by the CDC.
France has been rocked by an 'exceptional' outbreak, with nearly 12,000 people having been left hospitalised (the graphic shows how many people per 100,000 have been infected for each region - any more than 400 is considered an epidemic)
Public Health England data also shows the killer virus has left 1,938 in hospital in England - a quarter of which because of so-called 'Aussie flu'
Australia - whose winter occurs during the British summer - had one of its worst outbreaks on record, with two and a half times the normal number of cases.
Some of the country's A&E units had 'standing room only' after being swamped by more than 100,000 cases of the H3N2 strain.
The elderly with their compromised immune systems are particularly susceptible, and a spike in cases among young children has also been shown.
The flu season in the UK and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere tends to mirror what has happened in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere.
The same strains of the virus will circulate north in time for the British flu season, which typically begins in November and lasts until March.
Flu viruses are constantly changing proteins on their surface to avoid detection by the body's immune system - making it more deadly.
This transformation is called an 'antigenic shift' if it's large enough, and can lead to a pandemic. This was responsible for the swine flu outbreak in 2009.
The Aussie flu is transforming quickly, but not fast enough for experts to describe it as a shift. However, it is slowly building up immunity.
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