Did you get swine flu?

[NotAnotherNoughtiesTune]

Was discussing this with someone not long ago. Myself and a fair few friends got it but this person seemed to think barely anyone had it? Were we just really unlucky?

I didn't. One lady at work had it, but nobody I knew well.

I did. Confirmed by swab as I was a HCP. Was like a 'normal' flu but dragged on longer. But the year after I had a worse bout that was finally confirmed by the lab to be one of the strains not in that years vaccine. I developed pneumonia and one of my lung lobes is scarred and will never function again. I get instantly breathless going uphill. Flu is nasty.

Yes, it was horrific. I was in bed in my dads spare room for a month, lost 3 stone, hallucinated giant ladybirds falling on me from the ceiling.

I believe I did. It was the most ill i have ever felt. I visited a part of the country where it was prevalent and was ill after that.

No, but I nearly died from it anyway.

An abscess burst in my spine giving me partial paralysis and meningitis but it took a while to get an ambulance because they were so busy.

That is part of the problem with these big outbreaks, the other stuff doesn't stop. I am very glad for the NHS and the care I got once they got to me though.

Yep, was a HCP and was very unwell and off for three weeks. Every winter since I have had very nasty bronchitis, I am asthmatic and my lungs are definitely worse for it.

I had it when DD2 was 6 weeks old. Advised to take Tamiflu even though they warned me it hadn’t been tested with breastfeeding so I decided not to take it. I caught it from my sister who caught it from her mate who went to a festival with her. He didn’t think he could be contagious!!!

My dd had it when she was in year 1. I was worried she was going to die a couple of times she was so ill. She's never been as ill as that since. Was so relieved when she recovered. She lost a lot of weight and had a cough for weeks

Yes both Dh and I had it. Mine was the week my egg split and my baby turned into two so we joke my temp of 103.6 degrees (my mum's old style thermometer) cooked the egg.

I cried in the night because I needed the toilet but couldn't move my limbs. We had an ensuite but it was still too far. Dh carried me and held me upright (I managed to wipe thank goodness!) Always have my flu jab now!

I had it when I was 33 weeks pregnant (they tested and diagnosed it). Poor dd I was coughing so badly and bringing up blood that she was thrashing around inside me. I ended up bruised and with a cracked rib. Nothing they could do for me, and I’ve never known my dh to be so worried.

I worked in a call centre that hot desked and it spread like wild fire.

I had it, I have never been so ill in my life, I was so unwell I laid down in the snow after stumbling out my flat delirious and accidentally locked myself out.
I had a sense that I was going to die as dramatic as that sounds.
Luckily I called my mum but didn't speak and she drove round to see what was going on. (My ex refused point blank to leave work to care for the kids despite me being unconscious)

I woke up a week later.

I did. Woke up feeling fine one day. Went to work, started feeling a little odd during the morning, at lunch decided I should go home (as it was about an hours drive), got home at 1pm, in bed by 2pm and slept until 7am the next day when I couldn't even lift my head off the pillow.

Would say I've never felt so ill, but to be honest I barely remember anything about it as I was so out of it! I just woke up one morning a couple of days later and felt perfectly well again. Disappeared as quickly as it arrived!

Yep. I was an A&E nurse at the time. I caught it when I had to give a nebulizer to a disabled child who had it. Because the NHS was unprepared, I wasn't provided with the correct face mask that would have prevented me from getting swine flu. The face masks arrived a few weeks later, along with the vaccines for staff

I came down with the worst flu I've ever had during that time period. Hit me like a truck within the space of 30 minutes and I still remember the pains in my muscles and neck. Never had it tested, so it could have just been standard flu.... but it was horrible and I remember a month on still struggling to walk more than 100m without being exhausted.

I didn't have it but DD did when she was 3. She caught it in the January of 2010, during one of the coldest winters in decades, snow outside and with my heating packed up. She had never been so ill before or since. we were given the tamiflu capsules and were told to open them and put them into jam/ yoghurt or whatever to get her to take them but they tasted so bitter I couldn't disguise the taste and she wouldn't take it. I even tried the wrapping her in a towel and holding her down to get her to take it but she'd get so upset she would just vomit it up. She then wouldn't take any other medicine such as paracetamol. I am an experienced HCP but I have never been as scared as I was that week.

The GP was pretty sure I had it, but as I’d been ill for a week before I let my mum take me to the Doctor (I was 17ish?) they couldn’t test or give me anything.

I remember having to sit in quarantine at the GP though and I have never felt that ill in all my life. I didn’t get out of bed for 3 days, whereas I’ll usually suffer through any illness.

Don’t know anyone else who had it though.

I read that random blood tests suggested lots of/most people have had it but were unaware.

I got it late summer 2009, felt dreadful for a week, constant headache, bed bound and lost about a stone in weight. By the autumn, I was starting to get my strength back and ended up with a chest infection which then became pneumonia. By the Christmas I only started to feel like being able to breathe properly again. I forgot how bad I felt after reading the previous posters. I've never taken my health for granted since.

Sorry to hear some had it so bad and that it actually effected your health @OddBoots .

I was 'lucky' in that I was bedridden for 4 Days and after for about 2 weeks incredibly weak and painful.

Yes. I had a temperature of over 40 for 8 days in a row - thought I’d never get better. Had all the usual flu symptoms plus stomach symptoms. I was prescribed Tamiflu, but didn’t end up taking it.

I couldn't swallow the Tamiflu for a few days. I had 2 biscuits and water for 3 Days and a couple of trips to the toilet hurt so bad I swore I'd collapse. Was sweating so much too the bed was literally dripping.

I do think it may have been regional. I was in Herefordshire at the time.

I got it. Our very large and iconic building lost power on 2 of the floors at the time also! So it was carnage.

We suspended all activities on the floor, yet we had a population to serve, so we had to let people 3 at a time on the floor to work the basics. I was a manager, supervising and I got it horribly.

I was staying at my boyfriends house at the time thinking I was going to die, never felt so ill in my life! I got the antibiotics over the phone for the swine, strangest few weeks of my life

I didn’t catch it in the UK epidemic but as a health worker I was vaccinated. Had a weird reaction to the vaccine where I slept for the entirety of the next day (through multiple alarms/knocks on the door etc) - apparently that was a fairly common reaction. I got swine flu when volunteering in India a few years later. Have never felt so unwell in my entire life, and because I was on the other side of the world pretty much all on my own I was petrified I’d die and no one would find my body for days.
To the previous poster who said there were loads of people with positive blood tests for swine flu - there aren’t any diagnostic blood tests to my knowledge. It’s usually identified on a viral throat swab

Ds1 got it, he was 7 months old at the time and was kept in an isolation ward at the local hospital to stop it spreading to the other sick babies.
In fact we were the only patients in the entire ward and I wasn’t allowed to leave the ward and walk round to the other side where the nurses were, I had to ring the buzzer and they would come to me.
Dd and dh were not allowed on the ward at all just in case they had it too.
He was very poorly, I was so frightened he wouldn’t pull through. He’s ok now but he does have mild asthma, I’m not sure if it’s related though.

DH and I got it. I sometimes think about it when I see threads about childfree weddings on here as we were due to go to his brother's wedding to which it had emerged controversially and at the last minute our three DC were not invited. BIL hadn't written any names on the invitation so DC were kitted out with new outfits etc before we found out they weren't included. As it turned out the childcare we'd arranged for them came in very useful and the DC were away for longer than we'd planned as we were both very much wiped out. Not sure if BIL believed us though!