I had a cold, then a stomach virus, then another cold, all in a row around Thanksgiving, and now I’m sick again with a cold. I consider it a luxury when I go for two whole months without an illness that seriously impinges on my life.
I’ve asked my doctors about it, and they say it’s normal for someone who has two kids going to two (or more!) different schools each day. But god damn, it’s a drag.
How often do you get sick? Does it frequently involve a secondary infection? (I tend to get sinus infections and even had an ear infection last year.) Do you have kids? If you don’t get sick very often, to what do you attribute that?
I wish Airborne or zinc or echinacea could help, but I researched all that and there’s no good evidence that they fend off illness. Stupid herbs & minerals, being all pseudosciencey. :mad:
I don’t get sick that often: I probably get 2 or 3 colds a year, and might miss one day of work a year due to a mild bout of the flu (distinguished from the colds by actually running a fever). I’d say that I actually feel sick no more than 4 or 5 days per year.
Then again, I don’t have kids…though my wife is an elementary-school teacher, so I’m living with a carrier who brings home all of those lovely bugs.
I try to keep my sleep patterns normal, take vitamins (because I know I don’t eat as well as I should), and exercise regularly. I do take zinc lozenges when I first develop a cold; they seem to help with the duration…it might be woo, but I’ll take the placebo effect, then.
I maybe get a cold once a year, and I don’t think I’ve gotten the flu in five or six years. I have allergies and I’m sniffly and sneezy half the year though. I don’t have kids and the rest of the people in my house don’t get sick very often either.
I used to be the kind of person who averaged one cold every five years. Then I moved in with my fiancee, who is a MD doing her residency in family medicine. Every time she does a pediatrics rotation I get sick at some point, pretty much without fail.
Yet another reason children are evil, in a long line of them.
I get a cold 3-4 times a year, usually during the winter. I usually get them from my five year old, who’s in kindergarten now, but didn’t go to preschool or daycare. He gets high fevers with just a minor cold and he has the kind of asthma thing that kids usually grow out of, so his colds usually turn into weeks of coughing and require him to use an inhaler. My eight year old almost never gets sick. Hardly any colds. No ear infections. He had strep once and a 24 hour stomach virus a couple times. He’s in third grade and has missed one day of school since he started kindergarten. We had a year and a half stretch with no doctors visits for anyone except well-visits.
I attribute our relatively sickness-free life to my indifference as a housekeeper, but it’s probably just random luck.
A cold maybe once every year or two, on average. I thought I used to get the flu sometimes, but after reading here what a real flu is a few years ago, I’m not sure I’ve even had the flu as an adult.
There was indeed a couple of years when my kids were in Petri Dish school that I was sick more often, like 3 times a year.
I’d say 3-4 colds a year, and probably every other year I’ll get some sort of “stomach bug” (mild food poisoning?) that leave me unable to do anything but vomit and/or poo for a day…sometimes it stretches into 2 days.
That’s about it…only had the flu once…but it was one HELL of a time. I was a senior in college, came down with it right before my last final of the fall semester…took that final while suffering from the flu and the effects of half a bottle of Dayquil…I imagine that’s why I only got a ‘C’ in the class…
But after I “recovered”, I went home for Christmas and New Year’s, came back to school, then suffered a relapse a couple weeks into the new semester…so another week of the flu, which then led to a week and a half of pneumonia. Woo.
I have kids, and, have had years with one cold/illness after another, and, years with relatively few illnesses. I’m actually conducting a bit of an experiment right now. The only common denominator I can find for my cold-free years was having gotten the flu shot. The years I stayed sick, no flu shot. So, I’ve gotten the flu shot this year & am seeing what the result is. So far, I have been cold free. While it doesn’t make sense to me, as I always thought the flu shot protected one from only a few flu strains, I’m now starting to believe the flu shot may help ward off the common cold. Of course, might be coincidence, too.
Pretty much twice a year, like clockwork. Once in Octoberish and once in Februaryish. I don’t visit anywhere that’s a vector for colds. Yes, I work in a hospital, but even before I did I got colds.
About once, maybe twice a year. I don’t have kids but I do travel on the very crowded London Underground with a thousand hacking coughs, as my partner meets about two hundred people a day working in retail so it isn’t like I live in a bubble.
I attribute my health to a good, varied diet (lots of all food groups and no processed rubbish - I notice that people who are picky eaters or are constantly dieting seem to get sick a lot), reasonable amount of exercise and good genes - my family are all pretty hearty and long living.
I do get allergies though. Which pisses me off to no end.
I’ve only taken 2 sick days this year, and one was for a well-person doctor’s appointment. I took no sick days last year (note I have generous sick leave allowances at my work and I don’t work sick. I just don’t get sick.)
That’s about typical for me. I usually feel sick, on average, less than once a year. I have never gotten a flu shot. I say it’s because my parents let me play in the dirt and travel to third world countries when I was but a lass, but I assume its just luck of the draw. I also have the digestion of a goat, maybe the two are connected? Isn’t a huge amount of the immune system in the digestive system?
The last time I was sick for more than 2 consecutive days was when I had walking pneumonia in 2008.
Last year was a particularly bad year for me. Started off with stomach flu (passed from friends), then bronchitis and then was really good until the end of the year when I got a cold (passed from niece) that turned into a 2-month sinus infection.
I think usually I get sick maybe once a year. It’s different now that I have a niece, tho. And since I go to the gym so much. Since I work from home I am super isolated from any germs until I am sitting in germ central.
A fair bit now with the bairns - maybe 3 fluey type colds a year plus a few lighter colds that aren’t that bad on top. The heavier colds will last a week with the middle day being dismal and needing to stay home. I really wish I could throw off these heavier ones but still keep getting them - prior to the kids they were much rarer.
OTOH - I’m blessed with a resilient digestive system, top to bottom Sickness here is very rare for me.
In the past 10 years I’ve only taken time off from work for medical reasons a handful of times, and not all of them were infectious diseases per se, so I’d say around once every 2 years.
Not counting minor sniffles and the like. But if I took time off every time I had a cough I’d be taking several weeks off per year because when I do get a cold (only around once a year) it never goes away!
I rarely get sick, and when I do, there’s usually a pretty good reason why. For instance, I’ve been a little sick recently, but I’ve been under as much stress as I have been in years, so it’s not much of a surprise. The last time was two years ago when everyone, and I do mean everyone, around me go sick, and I actually went several weeks without catching it, but finally did; I suppose I can only be exposed to dozens of sick people so long before I get infected. Even still, I was only sick for two or three days where most of the people who had it were sick for a week. And the previous time before that was another 2 years when I got food poisoning from stuff that was WAY out of date but didn’t know until after I’d eaten it, and I was under a lot of stress at the time too. So yeah, looks like about every couple of years for me, but it’d realistically be even longer if not for some odd circumstances, and I still tend to recover quickly.
And I attribute it to my general health. I exercise borderline obsessively and I just have generally always been pretty healthy. I don’t generally spend much time around older people or kids, so I tend to be mostly around healthy adults and so I don’t get excessive exposure to germs either.
I get a walloping case of food poisoning or stomach virus maybe three times a year.
Once every year or two I catch a cold that turns into asthmatic bronchitis, sets up housekeeping and lasts for three months. My doctor says, “yep, that’s what going to kill you someday.” At least I get some codeine out of the deal, which goes great in champagne (I call it a Coughmopolitan).
Not very often at all. If I get full blown sick once a year, that’s a lot. A passing morning illness or something can happen 2-3 times a year, though.
Not that I can recall.
I don’t have kids, but I know many who do, and they certainly do have more concerns over illness.
I can only speculate, but I’d like to think I don’t get sick, due to a combination of my diet, hygiene, stress management, and general environment. In the times I’ve gotten sick, I tend to tough it out and don’t rely much on meds. I still think I’m as susceptible as anyone else when it comes to getting sick, though. Perhaps I’m just lucky.
Sickness here is very rare for me.