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

I was lying on the couch last night thinking about watching an episode of the Punisher on Netflix, so I did, then I sat up and realized I'd kinda hallucinated for an hour and the TV wasn't even on

I take off my socks to get into bed and it causes minutes of violent shivering

my eyes feel like I'm standing too close to a campfire

I'm exhausted but I'm scared to go to bed

my lungs sound like an old-timey car engine

i've got the flu and my period at the same time
the coughing
the fatigue and shivering
the sweating
+ cramps

brutal

Flu shot apparently very ineffective this year, though I guess any flu shot is better than no flu shot, in that it reduces symptoms.

We all got the flu shot at work, and my one co-worker who missed out because he was on vacation at the time is now using up all his sick days in the first week of 2018 because...he has the flu. Brutal. (Though it sounds like LL has it significantly worse.)

I know more than one person that proudly skipped the shot every year and then one year got the actual flu, then realized all those times they thought they might have had the flu in the past they just had a cold and the real flu will knock you on your ass.

deepest sympathy for LL, and all the flu sufferers of 2017-2018, and period sufferers of all times and places

I spent the week after my fever broke in a recliner at my Dad's house, dead to the world. one thing I will say is that total exhaustion due to viral invasions is pleasant in that it totally occludes anxiety and boredom... a slow lumbering elegance that is the complete opposite of my normal fretting and skittering around

i don't know what i have, but i stayed home yesterday; my coughs sounded like gagging, and my legs and back were so sore i took a dose of oxycodone from 2013.

Got the flu as well, despite getting the flu shot within the last month. Sympathies to all itt

a slow lumbering elegance that is the complete opposite of my normal fretting and skittering around
this is so otm
i finished a novel while lying on the couch!

I don't have the flu yet, just a wicked sinus infection. But my wife works at a doctor's office, where she has been besieged by flus this week as well as today's special - diarrhea patients.

two weeks now: all manner of horrible symptoms and fever-dreams over that time i won't burden you with, more or less myself this morning (tho still asthmatic and coughing)

posting here mainly to record that the delirium-doze obsession i couldn't get out of my head last night was whether or not to change my online name to PIXELLATED MOATY

lol, that's the best.

sorry you've been sick for so long. I actually tested positive for both strep and flu about a week and a half ago. I must have gone to the doctor right as it was coming up though, because I knocked them both down with Tamiflu and antibiotics in less than a week. Pretty amazing because when I got home and started googling things like "strep and flu at the same time" I ended up with news stories like: rare combination of two diseases kills family of five!

I also managed to not pass either of those things on to my wife or kids, but now we've all got a wicked sinus infection (confirmed not strep or flu).

(entering week three)

pixillated moaty surely

great article about the "spanish" flu in the current LRB

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n02/gavin-francis/the-untreatable

Week three.. by god Mark S. I can't even imagine what that'd be like. I'm on *day three* and having an incredibly difficult time fending off the 'this is it man, you're dying, why did you have to drink and smoke so much etc etc rip' ghouls. Eating fruit like a gud popsy boy.

Best to you Mark.

be prepared for a long haul LBI :( it's lile, ok we have a sequence of symptoms to get through here ppl, we will be taking them one by one so you can savour them individually, you will have little rest days between when you imagine maybe you're better but you're not, go

imago: if only, i haven't had alcohol since 7 jan, a beer a chicken and gazza w/a fishing rod wd see me right

Really sorry to hear you are still unwell Mark.

not too bad today apart from very tired (plus cough and asthma) -- but my buds who are co-sufferers warn of further relapses and new symptoms to come (sore throat for example)

two of them have reached week 4, one is in quite a bad way :( :( :(

(she just texted me to say she went to the doctor's today to get antibiotics and while she was there an old couple walked in and the wife dropped down dead in front of her)

Got sick on December 18th and I'm still not right... lungs hurt after I go up a couple flights of stairs, exhausted by lunchtime. If I take a deep breath it triggers a coughing fit, that's not inspiring.

going on ten days for me now, still only at like 75% today

best to you all. mark that post will haunt me forever :o

overdid it last night working on taxes while watching A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951), and overslept till 11

sleep is now good healthy semi-uninterrupted* sleep tho -- eg not feverishly haunted by the revelatory knowledge that TWIN PEAKS is about TIDE PODS and that TIDE PODS are a species of MYRHH, their bitter scent a harbinger of the stone cold tomb** -- and i've felt closer to better for four days in a row

*i'm a man in my late 50s
**i got unshakeable versions of this three nights in a row last week

ok bah i was walking around my flat thinking hurrah i'm quite better so i went out to the shops -- not the cornershop, but M&S, maybe five or six streets away, and came back absolutely wiped out and breathless

my friend who saw the woman drop dead got some antibiotics: i slightly distrust them but maybe i shd follow suit)

Antibiotics shouldn't have any effect on the flu, but if you've been ill this long you probably should get checked out again. I got double-checked yesterday because I got sick again about 4 days after all my original symptoms had cleared. The doc thinks I was just unlucky enough to come down with an unrelated cold virus, but she tested me again to make sure the flu and strep hadn't come back and listened to make sure I didn't have pneumonia, a very real concern.

when I got home and started googling things like "strep and flu at the same time" I ended up with news stories like: rare combination of two diseases kills family of five

Just read that a 7-year-old kid died from this combo over the weekend. Real depressing stuff.

Are you better yet mark s?

sick since christmas

this flu is bullshit

better than last week (able to get some work done) but still a little breathless and too quickly tired -- going to talk to a doctor tomorrow

my sister told me yesterday that her bf heard that someone he knew a little via his work -- not closely but was acquainted -- had died of it :(

Adenovirus Type 4 Respiratory Infections among Civilian Adults

I'm about six weeks out now and I can finally breathe normally... had the shortness of breath/exhaustion for like a month!

7 weeks in

yikes what

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