how long did your influenza last for?

[bobbybob]

Ds been ill since Sunday morning - now Thursday night here.

I got ill Sunday night

Dh ill Monday afternoon

None of us feel any better at all, our aches are largely confined to nightime - but replaced during the day with extreme tiredness.

How long could this continue?

[expatinscotland]

One week. Then it went into double pneumonia and I was ill a further 5 weeks.

The fever lasted for days and days. It'd break and then return.

[bobbybob]

Anyone got a better outcome?

[bobbybob]

Anyone please?

[Mosschops30]

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[foxinsocks]

I've only had flu once (in fact, someone was asking about this quite recently, I think it was Puff). I was in bed, only moving to go to the loo, for around 3-4 days. After that, I felt weak but able to be up and about with the kids (because I had to more than anything else) for around a week and I would say it took a full month before I felt fit enough to do proper exercise.

[gingernut]

3 days or so feeling really bad, hardly able to get up. Another 3 or 4 days feeling pretty bad, and activity really tired me out. Another week or so before I felt really well again. That is fairly mild flu.

It really annoys me when people come to work saying they've got flu - they've obviously never had real flu!

Hope you improve soon. Just try and rest as much as possible and get plenty of fluids.

[expatinscotland]

Here here, gingernut! We had a student come in complaining of 'flu'. One of the lecturers quipped, 'If you had flu, you wouldn't be walking.'

My doc always said the real test of flu is: if you see a £20 note lying 15 feet away and you can't be bothered to get up and get it, you have flu. Otherwise, it's a cold.

I've had geniune influenza 3x (knock on wood!), each time it was in November or December and it knocked me flat for days. The last time was the worst, tho.

[expatinscotland]

Trefusis
A rapid onset is one of the hallmarks of true influenza. I felt fine at work the day I fell ill. Came home, ate dinner, and w/i two hours had a 103 degree fever. Hadn't felt tired, groggy, bunged up, headachey or anything other than ordinary before that.

I do NOT get fevers. I've had glandular fever - with no fever - and infections - with no fever.

I felt better after about a week - not well enough to work but well enough to lie in front of the TV. Then I fell ill again and had trouble breathing. Thought I had relapsed. Went to GP and he sent me straight to hospital to treat the pneumonia. Where I spent Christmas Day

[Toothache]

Eurgh... my DH is at home today with 'flu'!!! ... he's struggling on though, my wee soldier.

"IT'S A FECKIN COLD YOU BLOUSE"... is what I want to say to him.

[expatinscotland]

Aye it's a cold. It's not flu season here. Unless you've been travelling in Southeast Asia and then YIKES! They're running out of time to locate the viral strain of 'bird flu' that has potential to go like the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920, which killed some 40m people, including my grandmother's first husband and child, a two-year-old daughter.

[Mosschops30]

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[expatinscotland]

Not really, trefusis. Not really at all. It's an avian flu, as the Spanish one was. There have been other epidemics which also began as avian flus. The strain of Hong Kong flu I caught in 1979, for example, began as an avian flu. The trouble w/avian flus is that they get into the migrating bird population. From there, they spread into other livestock, such as swine, and at that point they become quite dangerous, as influenza is highly contagious. It also has a long incubation period - 7 to 10 days - in which the infected person feels normal, but can pass on the virus.

This present virus is even worse in that it attacks ALL somal - body - cells, not just respiratory ones. And it is most fatal in children and young adults (up to age 35), rather than elderly.

My grandmother's husband was a 21-year old brickmaker and layer. Fit and healthy. He lasted 3 days following infection before succumbing to pneumonia. Her daughter lasted only 1 day. Amazingly, however, my gran was only sick for 4 days, although she was infected w/Spanish flu. She was just 18 years old. She survived, just as she later survived both typhoid and typhus.

When she was dying, some 74 years later, she died mumbling that little girl's name and stretching out her arms.

[puff]

bobbybob, I've just start to feel a bit more human since getting ill about 10 days ago. It started as a virus in the muscles of my ribcage and then turned into flu. I was in bed for 5 days, pretty much wiped out.

[puff]

expat

[expatinscotland]

My gran later had 5 other children, but Carla was the only one she outlived. She used to tell us the reason there were many books about love between a man and a woman but not many about a mother for her child was b/c there were no words to describe the latter kind of love.

When her husband and daughter died, she was so stricken with grief she packed her few belongings in a bag and walked to America. It took three months. She never went back to her village again, the pain was too great. It was 12 years before she married again.

Needless to say, I dislike hearing about bird flus.

[bobbybob]

It's having a bad effect on our financial situation - I'm having to cancel all my work - and this is the first day I have cared even a little bit. So that's the 20 pound note test passed for me then!

Fortunately dh gets paid sick leave - but not 5 weeks so he's not allowed to get pneumonia!

Dh is the opposite - trying to drag himself up to do ridiculous chores. He obviously has new man flu.

[bobbybob]

A week later and we are starting to be able to do normal things like cook a meal.