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

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

there was also a nasty norovirus going round london just before xmas :(

Definitely sounds norovirus-y

wife and both kids have flu, I'm on preemptive tamiflu

i am out of the woods and in my opinion entirely better now! nevertheless i have another liver test tomorrow (bcz they fucked up yesterday's) plus the TB nurse just dropped off two weeks-worth of antibiotics (rather than six) bcz the TB doctor is concerned abt the infection on my lung revealed last week (tho there is no sign yet it is TB)

in my own time i also have to provide *another* sputum sample -- i'm not quite sure how, as i am no longer coughing at all and have *never* coughed much during the entire stupid time (tbf the nurse acknowledged as much and sort of implied "only if you actually can")

(obviously this is all better-safe-than-sorry belt-and-braces stuff and an indication i was probably a lot iller than i realised three weeks ago)

YEEE HAW!!

good job, eat yerself fitter

Its 86 degrees outside and I'm freezing to death!!

think I have that norovirus. lovely stuff