I don’t mean “stomach flu” or a bad cold, but real, full-bore influenza, as diagnosed by a doctor.
What was it like? how long were you sick with it? how did you feel?
I’ve never had flu, hope I never will, but with all the H1N1 talk, I’m trying to get a feel for what it’s like.
I got the flu my freshman year of college right before finals. That Friday night I just felt kinda shitty and figured I was coming down with a cold. Went to bed and woke up feeling like someone beat me all over with a baseball bat. Every muscle was incredibly sore. Zero appetite. Feel insanely hot one minute, throwing the covers off, then soon after I’d be freezing and shivering under the covers. Pretty much slept on and off for a day or two, couldn’t really even get out of bed or concentrate enough to even watch TV. By Monday it wasn’t as bad but I still wasn’t eating, just water. Tuesday I went to the student health center, given a mono test which was negative, and given a z-pack. After I started taking that I began vomiting too. Somehow made it to my finals but did shitty on all of them. My parents had to drive down and take my car home Friday cause the dorms were closing for the holidays and by that point I’d only really been able to eat saltines and maybe a little soup. Attempted my first real meal that night and still couldn’t eat much. Didn’t feel totally normal again for almost another week.
Basically I felt sore, headachey, incredibly exhausted to the point where I felt I could hardly think straight. Just the epitome of shitty. And it took me about 2 weeks to feel 100% again. Worst part was I had no one to take care of me or help me out.
I had it when I was a teen, and it came on like a mack truck. I remember lying on the couch feeling like I maybe had a cold, then suddenly it was like the cold got cranked up to 11 and I had zero energy. IIRC I was sick about a week, and not up to par for maybe another week.
My husband had influenza (diagnosed by nasal swab antibody test) a few years ago. It started with a day of feeling like he had a cold, and then it got bad enough that he called me from work, asking me to set up an ASAP appointment with his doctor because he found himself staring at his work, unable to understand exactly what was written there. He was really tired at that point but not necessarily fatigued/sleepy; he says he just didn’t feel “right”. By later that day he had fever around 102, chills, and serious weakness. He had quite a few episodes where he could do little but just visibly shake with the chills while bundled up in multiple thick blankets; later he would throw off the blankets with fever. Other times he just felt beaten down, awful, sniffly, but barely well enough to type on a laptop and surf the web. At one point he thought he could maybe do some dishes, and ended up collapsing to his knees at the sink, then crawled back to the couch. The majority of the time was spent on the couch or in bed, with occasional trips to the bathroom. He was on Tamiflu. He left work on a Saturday, had the doctor’s appointment (and Tamiflu start) that day, and went back to work - still tired but not nearly like he had been - on Thursday. It took him a while to get back to feeling all right, too.
My OB is pretty insistent I had H1N1 a month ago.
It started with a raw, burning feeling in my chest. My windpipe felt uncomfortable, sore, like I’d been screaming for hours.
The next day (Monday), the burning subsided somewhat, but was replaced with full-body aches and low grade fever that Tylenol didn’t affect. I called my doc and was immediately started on Tamiflu (I’m pregnant, thus, high risk to H1N1).
The next few days are a blur. I remember Tuesday any movement felt impossible, like my limbs were made of lead. I thought I’d shower after kissing my hubby and preschooler goodbye as they left the house, but found just getting up and eating breakfast exhausted me. I stayed on the couch for hours. I had a low grade fever (about 100ish, slightly under usually), and would feel waves of HOT just shudder through my body. When I finally managed to get in the shower, I just wanted to curl up on the floor of the shower and nap halfway through. Afterwards, I was wrecked and returned to the couch.
For the next several days, any amount of movement (getting dressed, showering, various typical household things) exhausted me to no end, and I’d start pouring sweat and tremble. I’d sometimes start wheezing. I just had no energy, none. I also couldn’t think too clearly; I couldn’t read anything beyond message boards or brief articles, as I couldn’t concentrate.
By day 5, the lung pressure kicked in. I felt like I was under water–just that subtle, but still noticeable, pressure on the chest. This worsened over the next few days, and brought with it a cough that hurt like hell. I couldn’t sleep because the cough kept interrupting me; add to that I kept waking up just boiling hot and sweating, and sleep just wasn’t happening.
By Friday of that week, the cough and pressure had progressed to where my doc called me in for an exam. Thankfully my lungs were clear, but I was given a breathing treatment and ordered to use an inhaler every 4-6 hours. I would need the inhaler for two weeks.
I ran that low-grade fever for at least 11 straight days, and I’d say it took me 4 weeks to feel human again. The first 5 days of the illness or so are a blur. I really feel like I lost that week, and the days that followed were hazy at best.
Flu: body hurts like hell, body feels heavy as hell, fever, cough, raw throat, general AUGH. FWIW, I have had flus before (including while pregnant), but this one lasted about quadruple the length of anything I’d had before. It doth blow mightily.
I got it a lot when I was a kid. I can’t stand people who have a cold and whine about their “flu” (similar to people who complain about their “migraine” that’s just a headache).
The flu is awful. It’s really my illness I judge other illnesses against. I had a cold recently and my fiance kept wanting to baby me and I kept saying I wasn’t sick. We went round and round until we discovered his definition of “sick” was “being sick” and my definition of “sick” was “I feel like I want to die and even contemplating staggering to the bathroom is going to take a lot of effort”.
The flu is merciless. You have absolutely no energy. Moving more than your arm to reach for the TV remote requires actual effort. The fever makes you feel like you’re freezing to death, unless it gets really high. I was freezing with fever and fell asleep. I woke up literally feeling like I was in an oven. Took my temperature - 104.4 degrees. :eek:
I would get this deep seated full-body ache. Everything ached and anything exhausted me. My skin would hurt. I could run my hand lightly over the tips of my forearm hair and my skin would hurt. I’d randomly start just crying because of how awful I felt.
I’ve heard that the definition of the flu is that if you’re sick and laying on the couch and you see a $100 bill float down and land on your front lawn… and you don’t even think about getting up to get it, you have the flu. Sounds pretty accurate to me.
I had it once when I was 11, it was excruciatingly painful. All the flulike symptoms. I thought I might die.
I am currently recovering from a nasty cold that lasted a couple of days, and I don’t feel the need to say it’s irrelevant because I never worried I was going to die.
I got the flu conveniently right in the middle of my first election campaign. I knew I had the flu when, despite this circumstance and my renowned Internet addiction, I couldn’t even get out of bed to go to the computer (which was a meter away) and check my e-mail. I don’t mean I didn’t want to. I did want to. I couldn’t.
Thank gods the phone was in arm’s reach so I could call Mom. She got me out of bed and in front of the TV and changed the sheets, through which I had sweated impressively.
Ditto all the above. It was about 7 years ago. I thought I was going to die. Then I prayed that I would die. I stayed on the couch for the better part of a week.
My wife took me to the hospital on day 2 or 3 and they gave me a couple IV’s and sent me home. Fever? Check. “Beaten up with a baseball bat”? Check. No stomache or digestive problems–but I don’t remember eating anything. I DO remember thinking that if the house caught fire I was just going to burn up on the couch 'cause I had no strength to move anywhere.
Up until that point in my life I had never been really sick. I never got a flu shot b/c “I didn’t get sick.” God showed me my foolish pride. Now I always get a flu shot.
I get seriously irritated with people that think the flu is just a really bad cold as well. The flu is a very serious illness and I have had it twice. The second time was earlier this year and I just laid in a literal stupor on the couch for 4 days staring at the ceiling whenever I wasn’t passed out cold. I didn’t watch TV, read, sit up, eat or do anything else like that. My biggest project was going to the bathroom and refilling my water jug which usually took me over an hour to build up the strength for and, even then, I usually literally crawled those 30 feet. It was horrible.
I got the flu a few years ago. I went to work feeling fine, and by 10’o’clock I had a terrible fever and I had to go home.
I had a high fever and chills for about five days. Ditto what an above poster said about his skin hurting. It was painful even to feel the water from a shower on my skin. I also had a combination of the worst headache, sore throat, and completely swollen nasal passages ever. I was too fatigued to even sit up for very long. My day went in a cycle of sleeping, eating a little soup, watch an episode of Farscape from the box set I had received recently as a gift, and back to sleep. Even after my fever was gone and I felt mostly better, I was still very fatigued for many days afterward.
1968, The Hong Kong flu. I was a HS junior, member of the swim team, varsity football, 16, I was in great shape.
then I got the flu.
Did anybody get the license number of that truck that hit me?
I would cough and sneeze all day by the time it was time to go to bed, every time I would cough my chest and stomach muscles felt like they were about to cramp. I was actually in fear that these muscles might cramp and I would be unable to breathe. The doctor put me on nebutal (very strong sleeping pills) which would knock me out for 8 or 9 hours.
When I awoke I was alone in the house everyone else had gone to work. I would feel great, I would get out of bed and head to the bathroom. Before I could get to the door of my room I felt like I had been beat with several baseball bats all damn night. By the time I got to the toilet (maybe 20 feet) I was exhausted and had to rest before I headed back to bed. I often wound up crawling the last 10 feet.
Then the coughing, sneezing, and blowing my nose would start.
Several hours later, hunger would set in, well as much as it could. I would walk to the stairs and crawl up them and often crawl down the hall to the kitchen.
I would eat something and crawl back to the stairs. where I would sit on my ass and slide down them.
then I would rest at the bottom of the stairs for maybe 5 minutes before I crawled back to bed.
Now when I say crawl, I don’t mean walk slow. I mean hands and knees because I did not have the energy to walk.
Maybe two more trips to the bathroom and that was my day.
Lather rinse repeat for two solid weeks.
When it was over I had lost over 20 lbs and was weak as a kitten.
This is when I came up with Rick’s method of how to tell if you really have the flu.
If you are sick in bed and you see $10,000 cash laying on your front lawn do you:
A) get up and go get it
or
B) moan, roll over and stay in bed.
If you answered A you do not have the flu.
Yup. I was going to say “If the Publishers Clearinghouse people were at your door with a satchel full of cash, you’d just stay in bed and hope they come back later.”
We had H1N1 a couple months ago, and it was somewhere around 8PM on Day 4 that we looked at each other and said “We probably should think about having something to eat today” then didn’t have anything to eat because neither of us wanted to get up.
Well judging from some of the symptoms mentioned in the thread, I am looking at the doc in the box sometime soon.
Declan
Never had it. I’ve had Bronchitis, and walking pneumonia, but never the flu. I’ve also worked in a hospital and a pharmacy, both times during normal flu season.
I’ve had the flu a couple of times. You feel like total crap (the aforementioned not wanting to get up for for free money) for a few days and then you feel better but are easily fatigued. Make sure to keep up with your fluids even if you don’t want them.
Maybe it’s me, but I think people are being overly dramatic in this thread. I realize the flu can have serious health consequences for some segments of the population but for your normal healthy adult, well it sucks but that’s part of life. I’d take the flu over countless other diseases out there.
thanks for your comments, everyone.
this is the news article that got me curious: Healthy Hockey-playing Kid Dies from H1N1.
As I said in this thread, I got really sick for about a month, but I may not have had the just flu.
Anyway, besides the whole not being able to breathe easily thing that might have been mild pneumonia, what I remember most is how tired I was. One instance is still crystal clear in my mind almost two years later, right down to remembering what audiobook I was listening to while driving: I’d slept 11 hours the night before, and managed for the first time in more than two weeks not to feel like crawling into bed as soon as I clocked out of work. It seemed like a good time to finally drive to Kittery so I could pick up a Christmas gift for my brother. So I drove there directly from work, which was only a twenty, twenty-five minute drive, and since I was just buying a couple dozen of his favorite candies, it took me less than 15 minutes in the store. I got out to my car and sat in it trying not to cry - less than an hour after leaving I was so tired that I wasn’t going to be able to stop at the one other store I wanted to because I seriously thought that it might make me fall asleep driving if I strained myself any more than I already had. Right at that moment, it had been three weeks since I was well, and it felt like Id never have enough energy to do anything ever again. (I was fine another week later)
So…I’m still hoping I manage to get the shot before I get the flu. sigh.
Wacky coincidence! I just got diagnosed with the flu. Fever, chills, puking, weakness, and a hell of a cough. (Which is why I’m posting at nearly three in the morning.)
Went to work yesterday, thought I just had a cold. By the end of the day, fever spiked at 103.6.
Damnit, I don’t have time for this.
I think that’s what I had then, my senior year of high school. It wasn’t really a cold–I wasn’t really all that sniffly. I felt so achy though. Lying in bed hurt. Everything hurt. And I NEVER missed school then and I had to miss this one day because I could barely move. I’d sleep and then wake up and feel so shitty–I didn’t want to lie in bed, I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want to do anything. I’d try to go downstairs for like a change of pace and that would take like…an ungodly amount of time.
I’ve had the flu maybe 3 times in my life and I’ve finally smartened up to where I get a flu shot every season. It almost scares me to ever get that sick again.
The second time I had the flu, I lived alone and had no one to tend to me. My body ached and I was exhausted, but I just couldn’t get comfortable enough to fall asleep. Finally, after hours of tossing, turning and moaning I started drifting off, only to hear someone pounding on my front door frantically. I ignored it, but they wouldn’t let up.
I hoisted my aching body up off the couch and opened the door to my next door neighbor excitedly pointing out the house down the street that was completely engulfed in flames. There were fire trucks, hoses blazing water and lots of frantic people outside, but I just silently closed the door and flopped back down on the couch in an exhausted heap.
At that time, I was too exhausted and sick to care about the dangerous situation just a few doors down from me. It’s like ignoring free money like others said. Thankfully, nobody died in the fire.
The last time I had the flu, it developed into a respiratory infection and I could hardly breathe. At the time, I was a 23 year, 2 pack a day smoker. The feeling of almost-suffocation scared me so bad, I quit smoking cold turkey and haven’t touched one in 5 years.
As far as migraines? I don’t know which is worse. They both suck balls.