To hate when people say they have the flu? (Lighthearted)

[MeepMeepVrooooom]

I have absolutely no idea why and I think I'm a bit mental for this however...

I hate when people say they have the flu when they don't. It's a cold, man up a bit. I have every sympathy for people who do have the flu and are really ill.

You don't have the flu if you are sitting down the pub having a pint, or at work not looking like you are about to pass out, or going shopping. You have a bloody sniffle.

Does this annoy anybody else or should I get a grip and a large glass of wine and ignore it when anyone says it in future?

Only had flu once - knocked me off my feet for best part of a fortnight,
Had some very heavy colds where I haven't had the energy to do anything, but since having flu in my early 20s I definitely know the difference.

Have also had bacterial pneumonia - was in hospital and then mised 7 weeks of work. But to be fair to some people - there is viral pheumonia and that is often nowhere near as bad and people can go about their daily life easier, and it doesn't actually require antibiotics, etc - though they are often given incase it starts to develop. But then also some chest infections (of course pneumonia is also a form of chest infection) which are pretty bad too and can result in time off work, unable to do anything. I have had them too since having had pneumonia - but you can tell the difference ime.

You don't know how bad a 'cold' can get until you've had the flu. There's no mistaking it! I was housebound for 2 weeks last easter & could barely open my eyes as even a little bit of light stung. I couldn't sit up & had to lie down because my skin 'hurt' and sitting up put too much pressure on it. I have never used the word 'flu' lightly sine but I think it's easy to think a bad cold is the flu if you've never had it still annoys me though

YANBU. A colleague of mine has just had flu - he spent the Christmas holidays in bed shivering and dragged himself into work on Monday, two weeks after he first got ill, still looking like death warmed up. I got quite cross with a different colleague who was acting like a dying duck in a thunderstorm because he had a cold and a sore throat!

*since

It does make me a little ragey when people aren't even sick enough to have to stay home and say it!

Cold and flu are different. Even their symptoms have some differences:

www.nhs.uk/Livewell/coldsandflu/Pages/Isitacoldorflu.aspx

Symptoms of a cold include:
runny nose, beginning with clear mucus that develops into thicker, green mucus as the cold progresses
blocked nose
sore throat
sneezing
cough
People with a cold may also suffer with a mild fever, earache, tiredness and headache. Symptoms develop over one or two days and gradually get better after a few days. Some colds can last for up to two weeks.

Symptoms of flu

Flu usually comes on much more quickly than a cold, and symptoms include:
sudden fever of 38-40°C (100-104°F)
muscle aches and pains
sweating
feeling exhausted and needing to lie down
dry, chesty cough
sneezing
Flu symptoms appear one to three days after infection and most people recover within a week, although you may feel tired for longer.

The issue is when a cold comes with fever and aching limbs - means it can be harder to tell diffrence i guess.

^ Also, a cold always takes a day or more to develop, wheras with the flu (or at least the one I had) I was fine at 5pm and passed out, sweating and shaking by 8pm. It was scarily fast!

Me too! Especially when taking days off work! If someone has a cold and I have the flu and they need one day off and I need one week off, but they tell the boss they have a flu, I look like a sciver!

I genuinely thought I'd had flu until I did actually get it. Did I feel like a twat then? Not really, I was too busy crying with exhaustion and planning my funeral.

I have huge sympathy for those who can't have even an illness to themselves. DH always claims to feel ropey when I have period pain

I had proper flu and had to go and clean a flat I had moved out of, luckily had 2 weeks to do it. Took me 4 days to get to the top of the street as kept turning back, first day I gave up after forcing myself to get dressed. I hadn't had flu until then and had been guilty of saying flu when it was the cold, never again.

Best one I heard recently was someone saying they had "a touch of depression" wtf!!!

But when the swine flu did the rounds loads of people had it, took their Lemsip and struggled into work, assuming it was just a nasty cold (and were subsequently tested to price it had been flu all along). I think we've now swung a bit the other way and had the 20 quid note test ranmed down our throat so often that people think "Oh I can get out of bed so it's just a cold". It is perfectly possible to have a mild dose of influenza.

YANBU.

I thought I had had flu before, but then I actually got it last year and I was so ill for 3 weeks I realised I had been mistaken before!

Colds can be really bad or easy to cope with. I had a cold for two weeks and a week of that I felt so bad I couldn't do anything - it was a struggle to walk up and down stairs, I coughed a lot and my throat was horribly painful.

I've had other colds where it's stayed in the nose and felt a bit shit but carried on no problem.

So because there's so much differences between colds if you say you've got one people invariably think it's 'just a cold' but you can still feel so bad you can't go out.

The one time I've had flu there's was no mistaking it, I thought I was going to die it hurt so much - I shivered for about 5 days and was ill for 3 weeks.

DH always claims to feel ropey when I have period pain [hmmm] Nearly spat my coffee out at this.

YANBU

Ive had a heavy cold since mad Friday. I worked non stop over Christmas and NY. When I wasn't in work I was in bed. I was taking way too much cold and flu medicine and awake half the night coughing until I was vomiting. I've had a week off work and just about recovered.

Not flu though.

Ooooooh, this is such a pet hate!

Sniffly nobbers in work saying they've 'a touch of flu' for extra martyr points. Fuck off.

Had flu once and though I was dying. Actually going to die. Not schlebbing around in peejays. Dying.

Warning to those out shopping with a delicate sprinkle of the flu; one day it will find you, and you will think you're dying, and, when you're finally well enough to feel anything, you will feel like an arse.

Colds can be very nasty, and I found in my job as a teacher, it really told on me, on my feet all day, too much talking. In no way is it comparable to 'flu, which I've had twice in my life, and on both occasions was very ill for about two weeks and lost nearly a stone in weight.

One of the upsides to advancing age is I rarely gets cold any more, only one piddling little sniffle in the last three years.

So YANBU, OP.

YABU - it is possible to have mild flu. Look how many people were found to be immune after the swine flu epidemic without having been seriously ill.

Tbh the whole 'if you can get out of bed it's not flu' thing gets on my nerves more.

I agree.

But, my poor mother still feels bad about the day she heartlessly said 'oh, come on, you can stand and walk, you do not have flu!' to my brother, only to get a call half an hour later from the school nurse explaining that he had a temperature of 103 and was, in fact, extremely ill.

Whoops.

Apparently it's different in children and adults (which you all probably know), but even so, she was very good at giving us days off after that.

The migraine as opposed to good old headache really gets me! I work in an FE college and about two thirds of the students in my class of twenty claim that they suffer from migraines.

A cold can make you feel really and truly crap and while it might not be flu, please don't assume that a cold just involves a sniffle - that pisses me off, too!

bumbley I don't think this is the thread for you then

I have a friend who gets the flu every few months.. drives me nuts.

I've only ever had it once and I prayed for death.. I even felt upset when they took medised off the shelves as it was a godsend for it.

The thought of flu again scares the crap out of me.

The migraine thing annoys me as well.. I average one around once a year and and can't bear to move full stop never mind go out and about.

I always used to have the same sentiment as you, OP, until I had a really weird virus type thing at the back end of last year. It wasn't a cold, because I never had full cold symptoms, and the way I felt was similar to the two times I've previously definitely had flu - high temp, unable to eat, crying because my clothes hurt my skin etc. But I wasn't in bed the whole time, and didn't feel quite like I was dying in the same way as when I've definitely had flu. I was proper ill though, and very prone to tears at the drop of a hat, and if anyone had told me it was just a cold I'd have paid for someone to deck them (not well enough to do it myself) - didn't really feel better for a good three/four weeks. I think now it was a mild dose of flu, so it can happen.

I can see that MeepMeep :) (great name btw)

Is it possible to have flu for a long time or twice running?

I’ve been really ill since the 2nd week of Nov, was supposed to be ending a very exhausting situation in the morning, reality was 11pm when finally relieved, by which time I was a sneezing drowning mess but didn't think anything of it, just expected to get better soon and tried to push on through.

Christmas afternoon finally totally keeled over. Slept 24/7 for several days, and minus two afternoon trips to the Dr and one evening one drugged up to the eyeballs, I’ve been bedridden ever since and not managing to stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time in the day, and waking with bad facial pain every four hours through the night.
Apparently I don't have a temperature but I'm soaking the bed in sweat and feel like I've been beaten up and am drinking more than normal but mouth is totally dry.
I don’t look anything like I normally do, swollen face and dropped eyelid one side, and am too ill and weak to do anything. Trying to type this is hurting my eyes with the screen brightness on lowest setting.
I'm disabled but screamingly independant and normally just keep going.

Have had antibiotics which has sorted out the chest but the rest's not getting better. It’s been two months+, including two weeks of totally screwed, and I can't go on like this, and looking for answers.

If it is flu is there anything I can do?