Dopers who have had influenza: what's it like?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Nope. I remember each time I’ve had the flu in the last twenty or more years; they’re that vivid.

I remember two flu’s ago trying to get up out of bed to go pee, and just collapsing on the floor at the foot of the bed. I tried to call out to my husband down the hall watching television, but I couldn’t make a loud enough sound. I could not make it to the bathroom, so I just went to sleep again on the floor.

I don’t shower or bathe during the flu because the water hurts. You’re lying in bed, pouring buckets of sweat, but feeling like you’re freezing to death. The blankets hurt. They’re too heavy against your skin, but you’re too cold to take them off. Except you’re not really cold–you’re sweating so much your hair is wet.

All you can do is shiver, sweat, and try to sleep. You can’t read or surf or even watch TV–it’s all too much effort. I’d have the radio on, but you’re drifting in and out of sleep day and night, so even the radio is all strange after a while.

42

[quote=“Savannah, post:41, topic:515554”]

Nope. I remember each time I’ve had the flu in the last twenty or more years; they’re that vivid.

I agree the flu makes you feel awful, no doubt there. It was the paragraph upon paragrah of turgid prose, in reply to the OP, I thought overly dramatic. IMHO, it’s not a life altering event. Some posters seem to think otherwise.

43

[quote=“valleyofthedolls, post:42, topic:515554”]

It IS possible to have varying degrees of influenza, y’know. Good for you if you had a less severe flu. A lot of us didn’t.

44

[quote=“zweisamkeit, post:43, topic:515554”]

One-upmanship on who was more ill isn’t my bag. If it makes you feel better, however, yes I was less sick than you and suffered less than you.

45

Got the flu every freaking fall as an undergrad in the dorms.

a) post nasal drip phase. PND is never a lot of fun whether caused by allergies, colds, or flu buggies. With the flu it gets worse and worse and the back of your throat gets more and more painfully sore, all the way up behind your nose and up into your sinuses and it feels like shit, tastes and smells like sewage.

b) as that gets worse your energy level plummets and you hurt all over and start saying things like “please let me die”

c) you start coughing, a little bit then a lot, barking coughs that feel like you’ve got a swimming pool in your lungs to get rid of. Oddly, you’re feeling better but everyone is worrying about you more (they could not SEE how awful you felt in the previous stages).

d) at the culmination of coughsville, you completely lose your voice. By now you feel fine, mostly, and are ready to go back to work or back to class; the coughing and lack of voice is annoying. You aren’t in severe pain.

e) for what seems like 35 years you continue to cough. you get tired of coughing. you get seriously fucking tired of coughing. bloody freaking HELL is it ever gonna stop? eventually it does, gradually sort of fading out to nothing.

46

I’ve always heard:

“If you want to tell if you have the flu, do the 100 dollar test, which is if you see a hundred dollar bill laying just outside the room and you can’t get up to get it, you have the flu.”

Dunno how accurate it is, but I figured it was more of a joke. :slight_smile:

47

I think it’s specifically that you don’t care there’s a $100 bill on the lawn.

I’ve had the flu once. January 2008. It went through my whole house, we just laid in bed or on the couch waiting for death. Usual symptoms, but what I remember most was the utter exhaustion, and the fever. I remember waking up at 4 AM, taking my temp and getting 104, crawling to the bathroom and putting 6 inches of cool water in the tub. It was a big old clawfoot, and getting into it was like climbing Everest for me. And the tub itself was arctic cold. I laid in the water and waited for dawn.

Got my temp down to 102 and change, and crawled back to bed. Mid-morning my boss called, there was some sort of emergency. "I know you’re sick, but. . " I told him how high my fever was. He apologized again, and said it was really, really important.

I walked two weeks on a broken foot I was trying to ignore, and went to work. I went to work after being awake 24hrs straight when my best friend had her baby. I’ve worked through migraines (real ones-- with my door closed, lights off, crying my eyes out).

This time, without so much as a hesitation, I said, “Fire me,” and hung up the phone.

(No, I didn’t get fired. My boss called back five minutes later, said he seriously debated calling 911 and wanted to know if I needed him to come take to Urgent Care or the ER.)

48

I’ve only had genuine 'flu twice, and both times it turned into pneunomia. Last year my whole family had (diagnosed) Influenza A. I was the only one who ended up with pneumonia, and it was mild compared with my last experience.

Real 'flu means you can’t “carry on”. You can force yourself to go shopping so you don’t die (I was single the first time I got it), but it is extremely debilitating. Both times I lost my appetite, and they are the only times in my life that has happened. I recall last year having an very empty feeling, but still not feeling hungry. It was very, very bizarre. Lost a good deal of weight, which saved quite a deal of money on a new wardrobe :slight_smile: (I had started to increase weight due to lack of exercise.)

49

All the symptoms I saw you mention were vomiting-related. You didn’t have the flu. Noroivrus, maybe (the misnamed “stomach flu”). Influenza is a respiratory problem – you don’t vomit unless you’ve got something else going on, too.

I’ve had the flu four or five times – three times it progressed to pneumonia (which I’ve had five or six times. whee.) With pneumonia, I’ve actually still been working out and swimming while I had fluid in my lungs from walking pneumonia. With the flu… no walking.

Everything aches, but it’s sort of a dull pain, not sharp. Utterly weak and exhausted. Need to cough, but too tired to do it. You don’t eat; hopefully you drink something, or it’s even worse. I tend to cycle between freezing and boiling, every ten to twenty minutes. Need to sleep, but can’t stay asleep more than a half-hour or so. End up in a bleary daze where nothing makes sense.

The moment where the fever breaks is remarkable relief, and it’s woken me up from sleep and stupor both. And then, I usually sleep about 16 hours straight.

50

Thank you for the information! Like I said, it wasn’t officially diagnosed, and it’s long enough ago—and tied up with enough shadowy memories of misery and terror, baying like hounds in the fog—that I don’t actually remember if there were any respiratory symptoms or not.

51

I’m getting over what might be H1N1, but my swab test isn’t back.

Started on Monday, normal cold-like symptoms. Cough, runny nose. Tuesday, called my mother and got her to take my toddler for the morning, went back to bed. Probably had a low fever but only noticed that I had a headache, cough, and just. wanted. sleep. Slept on and off for most of the day, feeling increasingly sore, miserable, tired, unfocused, achy, and awful. Racking cough.

Took temp at 7, which was 38.5C (not good). Called midwife (I’m 19 weeks pregnant), she told me to go to emergency. Put toddler to bed, went, sat for many hours, fever broke, I came home because we were told there would be another five hours wait at least, and I felt miserable. Went to bed, fever came back, spent Wednesday also in bed, except for brief visit to my family doctor (when she came in I was lying down on the exam bed/table), she diagnosed influenza, probably swine flu. Gave me a prescription for Tamiflu for me, my toddler, and husband, and told me to go home to bed and stay there.

I did.

You really wouldn’t get up for a suitcase full of money. I didn’t eat for three days and I’m pregnant and at the starving stage. Didn’t want to turn over, move, wake up, or talk. Just wanted the misery to stop.

Horrible high fever finally broke yesterday morning, spent since then lying around staring blankly at things.

My son’s at my parents’ place till tomorrow. We’re (well, not me. Husband and housemate) wiping everything down with Lysol and washing stuff.
I think I’ll go lie down again now.

52

I’ve had the flu three times that I can remember (I may have had it as a kid, but I can’t recall). The first time was over Christmas - I got sick on December 26 and didn’t get out of bed until New Year’s Day. Fever, aches, fatigue, unbelievable headache, and a hacking cough that was incredibly painful.

The second time was when I was pregnant. Basically the same as the first time, only I was more miserable because I couldn’t take as much medication as I would have liked. Stayed in bed for four days.

I’m just getting over the flu right now - it hit me six days ago. This one wasn’t nearly as bad as the other two. It only knocked me completely out for about a day. Mild fever (100 or 101), body aches, headache, and that horrible cough. I haven’t been incapacitated by this one (except for that first day), but I’ve felt pretty crappy for nearly a week now.

53

I’m surprised; every time I’ve gotten the nasal swab (ack) it took 5-10 minutes for results.

Also, H1N1 commonly relapses (fever breaks) and recurrs the next day according to my SiL the nurse practitioner and what my nephew went through, so sounds like what you’re going through for sure.

54

You should let the CDC know, they have vomiting and diarrhea listed as symptoms for both seasonal flu and H1N1.

55

I am a sickly person who has had various illnesses, I sort of assumed I had the flu before. Surely I had many times where I wasn’t sure if I had the flu or a really bad cold.

Until this Spring, when I actually got the flu. Oh, holy hell did that suck. I really did think I was dying. I wasn’t vomiting or upset stomach, but I couldn’t sleep at night because my body was racked with coughing and my throat was killing me from all that hacking. I was feverish and completely devoid of energy. I basically became an invalid for four days, at which point I tried to go to work, got sicker and called out again. I was too miserable to even watch television. I just wanted to be unconscious, and I couldn’t even manage that.

I never cared a whit about catching the flu before, but now that I’ve had it, I will go to great lengths to avoid getting it again.

56

Last I read, it’s more common in H1N1 than for seasonal, and if it’s seasonal flu those symptoms are more common for kids/teens and rather rare for adults.

57

from here

Did you somehow misunderstand how, when Ranchoth listed a bunch of symptoms that are not common flu-symptoms, that it was probably not the flu?

58

Ah. I threw up a few times, but as I said, I’m pregnant, I stopped having regular every day morning sickness about two weeks ago, and prolonged coughing tends to trigger my now-touchy gag/vomit reflex, so I dunno if it was directly related to the 'flu or not.

My doctor had to send the swab out for testing, and I was her first patient with probably H1N1, so I have no idea how long it should take. I am a lot better, although I still feel as lively as cold oatmeal.

Huh: re the fever breaks. Okay. I’m grateful my kid and husband haven’t caught it. Especially my little one.

59

No, I did not misunderstand, after correcting Ranchoth on what he thought was the flu you went on to make it sound like vomiting and diarrhea could not possibly be associated with the flu unless there was something else going on. As I had just read the CDC website about the flus before even seeing this thread the listed symptoms, which included vomiting and diarrhea, were still fresh in my mind and I felt your comment was misleading. Also saying that a symptom is most often associated with children does not mean it could never have the same effect on adults.

I apologize if I came off as snarky but I was feeling cranky because I have been coughing for two days and did not sleep well last night due to chills and a monster headache, but I don’t think I have the flu … Yet.

60

Although it’s irritating to endure, getting the nasal swab test for the flu will allow you to get a prescription for Tamiflu, which is apparently quite effective against H1N1… if you take it before you’ve got all the symptoms, full-blown.

(after my nephew came down with it, my SiL sent me all sorts of info on H1N1 because I’m Mr. Respiratory Failment). Just sayin’.