My wife and I are both sick today (apparently all my fault because according to my wife “I touch everything when we go to the store”. Sigh… It’s hard to live with someone who is mildly OCD.) So, how do I know what’s making us so damn miserable (okay me miserable because I’m a giant baby when I get sick.) I never know how to tell if it’s a flu or cold. Fever, stuffy nose, headache.
A word of warning to all you married men out there, asking if you can have a little bell to ring when you need something while resting in bed gets you an extended look of death. I don’t recommend asking that question.:rolleyes:
My father-in-law knew the code for making his own phone ring, so when he was sick in bed, he would use the bedside phone to make the extensions ring, and when his wife answered, he’d say “How about another cup of tea?” He knew she couldn’t resist answering the phone.
IANAD, but fever, stuffy nose, headache? Most likely a cold. Throwing up, feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck? Probably the flu. I don’t think I’ve ever had the flu (not counting something like a 24hr stomach bug) but from what I’ve been told, if you have the flu, you KNOW it’s the flu.
The common expression is that if you feel like you’re going to die, you have a cold. If you wish you’d die, you have the flu. Getting the flu is a significantly worse feeling than a cold, and you’re wiped out for days, unable to perform basic functions.
In my experience, if you are posting the question on the Dope while struck with it, you have a cold. If it was the flu, you would be mostly be lying there suffering, not socializing online - unless you are getting over it.
It’s hard to tell as there are always so many things going around. Currently I have a sore throat, and I don’t know if it will turn into something worse or if this is all to it. I guess you and your wife will just have to wait and see.
I think you’re describing gastroenteritis which is commonly called the flu but isn’t really. I believe the OP was asking about influenza which has a shopping list of symptoms, but nausea isn’t one of them.
Peter Sellers’ wife was in the kitchen one day when the front door bell rang. She answered it. It was a telegram. It read, “Please bring me some tea - Peter.” He was upstairs in his office.
•Fever* or feeling feverish/chills
•Cough
•Sore throat
•Runny or stuffy nose
•Muscle or body aches
•Headaches
•Fatigue (tiredness)
•Some people may have vomiting and diarrhea, though this is more common in children than adults.
The very high fever can make almost anyone feel dizzy and pukey, as can ingesting the buckets of snot that sometimes occur with the flu.
In my experience, while there is a laundry list of variable symptoms that overlap with the cold, what really differentiates the two is the way the flu brutally curb-stomps you into next week, like a viral neo-Nazi.
Also, I tended to get the over-all body pains that resemble what I imagine a hefty dose of Strychnine would feel like, just before you die. You simply can’t get that with a cold.
Actually, that’s one of the main ways you can tell if it’s a cold or a flue. With a cold, you wait and see because it develops over at least a day or two. IME, flu hits so fast it’s almost surreal: you leave the house feeling fine, and in a couple hour period go from “Am I coming down with something?” to “I am so miserably sick I can’t figure out the logistics of getting myself home.”
I get with any upper respiratory problem a symptom I call ‘snot stomach.’ It makes me throw up and have the runs.
(This is not so bad when you have a cold. When you have the immobilizing flu or something equally as debilitating like strep throat or pneumonia, the very idea of getting out of bed to go to the bathroom is awful.)
How bad a fever? I was always taught that fevers are a good way to differentiate the two. Then again, as others have said, you’re able to sit upright and navigate the internet so it can’t be that bad.
I’ve had influenza twice ever. Jesus Christ, is it just about the worst thing ever. I get pneumonia every year like clockwork and would rather have that once a month than ever have influenza again (realistically that’s only because expectorants with codeine and z-paks exist; pneumonia is pretty terrible, too). Anyway, flu. Temps approaching 105, migraine-level headache, sweating and freezing at the same time, being so tired that getting up to pee is too much of a chore, etc. I think my house could have caught fire and I would have simply enlisted the bigger of my kids to take the littler one outside and then rolled over and gone back to sleep. He was even old enough at the time to call 9-1-1 all by himself so maybe I would have thought to have him do that and then maybe my remains would have still be recognizable for, you know, memorial purposes or whatever. It’s pretty awful.
I think I was still tired even a month later, like physically just TIRED and muscle achy and whatever.
