I have a cold. I’m sniffly and stuffy and have a sore, scratchy throat. In a couple of days, I’ll start coughing, and will continue for a week or so. I’m not achy or fevery. I call this a cold.
There’s a lot of other snifflers and coughers around my office lately. One lady says she has an upper respiratory infection. My grandboss told me his was a sinus infection. When I blow my nose, it sure looks infection-y. None of us have been to the doctor
I’ve found in the various places I’ve lived, that bouts of throwing up uncontrollably are in turns referred to as stomach flu, stomach virus, food poisoning, and “sick to my stomach.”
IMO, “upper respiratory infection,” and “food poisioning” sound way more serious than “cold” and “sick to my stomach,” and I think people choose these terms to garner more sympathy.
So what do you say when you’ve got the undiagnosed sickies?
Actually I just try to identify what I’ve got. I had a cold 2 weeks ago that has turned into a sinus infection. I was taking OTC meds for it and my stomach got “backed up” from that. So I took some OTC meds for that ailment and stopped taking the sinus meds so now I have a headache and the shits.
When I had the stomach flu I said I had “a stomach flu.” I’ve been around the SDMB long enough to know that I don’t have “THE FLU”
If I’m sniffly, sneezy, and coughing, it’s allergies.
If I have to blow my nose every five minutes, my head is congested, etc, I’ve got a cold.
If I’ve got an upset stomach or puked a couple of times, my stomach is bothering me (or something similar to that). This can range from not feeling like eating to I want die because I’m so nauseous (it’s only been that bad once or twice in five years.)
I think I’ve only gotten the flu once or twice - week long misery, everybody in the house was sick, hardly ate anything and laid around all day without even noticing.
“Upper respiratory infection” is what it’s called in the medical community because patients hate it when they come all the way to the ER and are told they have a cold. Other possibilities are “influenza-like illness” and “viral syndrome.” It’s all consumer-driven jargon to describe what sensible people call a cold.
The stomach stuff I call gastroenteritis if it includes vomiting and/or diarrhea, upset stomach if it’s just nausea.
I’ll say I have a “cold” or if it is bad a “nasty cold”. I’m I’m vomiting, I call it a “stomach bug”. Having once had the flu I reserve “the flu” for actual influenza. A cold is nothing next to the flu.
Something that’s persistent in my sinuses, I’ll go see a doctor about and get antibiotics for (if it’s bacterial): “sinus infection”
Gastrointestinal distress: “food poisoning” (there’s no such thing as a “stomach flu”, and it’s food/water-borne illness is more likely bacterial than viral)
I luckily haven’t had the flu in many years (I get a vaccine every year). I am also rankled by people who use “the flu” to mean a bad cold. I was sick almost the whole month of November with a cold that turned into a sinus infection that lingered.
I was raised in a religion where, essentially, if you say you’re sick you’re supposed to pretend you’re not. It still feels weird to talk about, so a lot of times I won’t say anything more specific than “I’m sick.”
I get a rhinovirus or once in a serious blue moon one or another influenza, and with stomach issues it tends to be gastroenteritis - I frequently get paid to be sick and get cultured at a medical testing facility that roomie and I guinea pig at. I just got paid $160 to take mucinex [or not] for a week since I popped up with a rhinovirus. Since I would normally have taken it, I just got paid to do what I normally would do.
