THE GODDAMN FLU!!!!!!!!!!!

Not intensely sick throughout but so tired and run down andwrecked. sniffling cough returned for third time yesterday

get well soon dude (and all the rest of you too)!

I got all this single malt for Christmas and I'm too sick to drink any

The week before I descended into pneumonia (iirc about three years ago now) I tried some green spot and it was the vilest thing

Save the good stuff for sure

lol ok i saw the doctor, who felt i needed something to speed things along ftb asthma and persisting mild breathlessness = 40 mgs of steroids a day for 5 days (plus a chest xray if the steroids don't move things along in the next 2 days)

the steroids in question only come in 5mg doses so i have to take 8 a morning, which added to my post-op cryoblation medication (plus vitamin C and D) = 13 pills every morning and a further 6 at night

*tries to get used to sounding like a pair of rattled maraccas*

The lorry arrived the next day
Swiss gnomes dealing out potions

Wife and son have been sick over last few days. I feel fine, but it seems like it's just a matter of time.

last winter i wheezed and sneezed and was short of breath for more than two months in a row, could feel stuff in chest when i breathed in, it was p nuts

i can't feel -- and the doctor couldn't find with a stethoscope -- anything actually impeding my chest, and my peak flow seemed roughly normal (i.e. rubbish but no lower than usual)

i just don't seem to have quite enough puff :(

if you have acid reflux (who doesn't post 30) then that can aggravate your throat and breathing without it affecting peak flow

heh, when I went to the doctor a few weeks ago they gave me a steroid inhaler. I used it for a week and I guess improvement but it was giving me a sore throat and heartburn! so I stopped. get well soon mark S and everyone else with draggy 2018 flu

Also, in flu news, my wife's aunt has been in the hospital for almost 2 weeks due to kidney failure and low blood pressure that was aggravated by the flu. We don't know if she's going to make it.

Sinus twinges and brain fog: prodrome or nocebo effect?

HI DERE

on that tamiflu, this set off my neck somehow? the flu itself is unpleasant but i can't move my fucking neck or upper back without pain, so that's fun.

you sure you don't have meningitis?

no fever, no headache, no nausea, tested positive for flu. the neck thing is an issue i've had in the past; they suggested my system is just run down. but yeah, it occurred to me too. 24 hour muscle spasm is no joke

I've heard Tamiflu kinda wrecks you

Got it twice in December/January (or it was the same bug with a two week pause). Just overwhelming tiredness all the time.

I've never had the flu but I've been feeling weird and shitty since Sunday so I hope that's not that it is.

.. what it is, even.

I know I've had a stiff neck during certain past colds or flu--maybe from sleeping funny while trying to breathe? I'll have a nice hot toddy when I get home tonight, but right now that feels like incredibly long time away.

nah, you'll know when you get the flu, you wake up feeling fine and by the afternoon you are a sweating jelly lying on the floor hoping for a swift death

i didn't know! just felt rundown and beat up. Got my goddamn flu shot on Friday, diagnosed with the flu next monday. bad timing, shoulda got mine earlier.
i am neti potting 2 or 3 times a day and gargling with salt water at the same time. not being very productive.

it could be worse... my grandfather got the flu in 1919 and told my dad he went from walking home feeling fine to collapsing in the street, coughing up blood in less than an hour (he lived, thus I exist to relate this tale)

yikes
yeah, everything can always be worse. i am hoping for better shortly but first a nap

I have quit sugary everything and coffee and staying up late and have been feeding this bitch kale and tomatoes and beans

I feel more likely to live I just don't want to like this

the possible side-effects list of the steroids i am taking is quite scary (however after 2 out of 5 days dosage i already feel better so fingers x-ed)

sure would like to be able to sleep through the night without waking up eighteen times.

Is deej calling u

thankfully, no

rap thread nightmares?

recurrence of a spine injury that i thought was past that appears to have been exacerbated by the flu, if you wags must know; kinda in constant pain and having serious issues turning my neck.

http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Amypoehler.gif

I've heard Tamiflu kinda wrecks you

― erry red flag (f. hazel), Tuesday, January 30, 2018 1:00 PM (yesterday)

it mostly can cause some nausea and vomiting, but the real issue with tamiflu is that the data we have suggests that it is almost completely useless. it has been shown to decrease symptom duration by about a half a day, but hasn't been shown to decrease complications, hospitalizations, or death. one of the best rackets we have going in the medical profession

But it's really expensive!

yeah, it was a hundred bucks for me. fucking hell, i'm pretty rundown.

Amantadine's not effective against flu anymore, huh.

ok lol actually feeling much much better today, nevertheless spent all morning at homerton hospital getting just-in-case tests for TB as the belt-and-braces chest xray my GP suggested concerned them

IMO a false alarm -- for example i have no cough at all* -- but better safe than sorry

*or not until i'd spent 30 mins on the sputum-inducing saline nebuliser

TB-WATCH: 1st tests (skin and ew ew sputum) fine, blood results next week, "slow sputum" under obs for 6 weeks -- at worst it has been caught super-early and i go onto antibiotics (for six months!) but it is all very treatable so hurrah 😷 😷 😷

TB onset is slow and steady, but it just keeps going getting worse and worse for months. At least your GP isn't an incompetent fuckwit who just sends you away saying you've got bronchitis multiple times until you can barely breathe. Good luck.

wow, good luck Mark.

And all with this ongoing flu.

the advantage of being asthmatic (also ancient) is that i am super-aware of minor shifts in my ability to breathe well, and the doctors at my health centre know to pay attention to these shifts, so fingers x-ed

I was talking a friend who I often see on my dog walk yesterday, she's 73 and just recovered from what she said was the Aussie flu strain. She said it was the worst flu she has contracted in her life, and only a few back was thinking the end was nigh.

My wife's aunt, who was in the hospital, was finally released after 20 days. Hopefully, she's healthy enough now to take care of herself at home. I'm sure my mother-in-law will be checking in on her.

and into week five!

the actual flu is long gone i think and the TB stuff will be slow reveal if it all -- certainly it's not currently manifesting in any appreciable way

i did get called in today for FURTHER LIVER TESTS though, to follow up on some that worried them from 22 jan (routine part of the follow-on to last year's cryoablation and the medication i'm still on, one element of which can be toxic for the liver -- tho generally only if yr on it for far longer than i have been)

the GP thinks it likely that -- as i was tested right in the middle of the worst of my flu -- this is why my liver seemed to be registering as working too hard: so there should be nothing to see here when they retest, we shall see fingers x-ed

anyway BORED NOW (others have had it much worse obviously but it is still tiresome and distracting and i am now a month behind with my big PLAN FOR JAN)

familiar pundit on the Man Flu!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/style/why-men-complain-about-colds-so-much.html

manTB

Woke up in the middle of last night and vomited on and off for 6 hours. At the end of it I felt like it could just be food poisoning, I felt kinda better, but now I have a fever & I ache & I can’t keep anything down, not even water. So... I hope it’s just food poisoning.

I’m not sweating