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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that many people say they have the flu when really they just ahe the cold?

135 replies

OhFFSWhatsWrongNow · 02/12/2014 21:54

I hear it quite a lot, especially from colleagues. "I shouldn't have come in today, I've got the flu", or "I can't stop sneezing, I have the flu"

I have only had the flu once in my life and I literally couldn't move from my bed. These people may have a horrible cold (and I do have sympathy for them, it's not nice) but they are able to walk, lift their heads, eat etc. i couldn't do any of these things.

I realise I a may be generalising here and basing this on my own experience and am prepared to be told so, but Aibu to think that the sniffles, sneezes and a runny/blocked nose is not the same as having the flu and the flu is much, much worse?

OP posts:
crumblebumblebee · 03/12/2014 11:00

angelos I got out of bed when I had the flu. I went to the doctor.

IKnitYouKnot · 03/12/2014 12:01

I had a very nasty 'flu like' virus last year, and that was bad enough.
Maybe it was a 'milder case' but having seen DH with it I suspect not.
I did have many of the same symptoms though, and more besides. I've never been so ill in my life. Thankfully (?) it was over Xmas and DH was home to take over with the kids etc

I've watched DH, a 6ft+, 14st man suffer it twice, he is NEVER ill, much less suffers with 'man flu'
It put him on his backside, he couldn't move. I called the doctor out to him, the doctor was an ass on the phone "We don't come out to healthy young men, put him in a taxi and send him here" I told him he couldn't even lift himself up on to our low sofa! He came out, took one look at him and took back all his rudeness! Prescribed strong antibiotics which made little difference tbh

Watching DH suffer it, I was more scared for him then, than I was when he was in hospital with myocarditis!

It bugs me to hear a common cold compared to flu. I know a nasty cold can be awful, but it is not bloody flu.

Migraine in place of a headache bugs me a lot too. I am a regular sufferer of migraines, I have been since 11 (and boy was my first one a doozy!)
They can be debilitating, nothing like a 'headache'

Germgirl · 03/12/2014 12:39

The consultant microbiologist I used to work with regularly told us all he had flu when he had a mild sniffly cold.
This is a man who should definitely know the difference!
I've had flu a few times, last time was the swine flu year, was that 2009? I lost a stone in 5 days & had a temperature of 43, the flu diminished & I then caught pneumonia. I coughed so hard I wet myself!
Sadly the stone of flab returned after I recovered.

Suzannewithaplan · 03/12/2014 12:44

I've never had it

ItIsSmallerOnTheOutside · 03/12/2014 13:27

My dh doesnt get colds he gets the flu.
Never has a bad headache, only a migraine.

The rest of his family are worse.

netty7070 · 03/12/2014 13:37

I've had flu once as a strong 20-something and remember my flatmate having to hold me upright in bed so I could swallow my medicine. It took 3 weeks+ before I felt anything like normal again.
You cannot go to work with flu. You can barely get out of bed.

Fallingovercliffs · 03/12/2014 13:45

People do this with all sorts of illnesses. Colds become 'flu, headaches become migraine attacks, mild food intolerances become allergies, etc etc etc.

YANBU. I saw my mum suffering from flu once. She is not a woman who cries very often, but she did that time!

grimbletart · 03/12/2014 14:00

500 million people were hit by the flu pandemic of 1918 and it killed 3 to 5% of the world's population. Doubt any of them mixed it up with a cold. My mum was one of 8 children. Everyone in their house had it, parents first. Each child who was still healthy looked after the sick ones until they went down with it, by which time the first had partially recovered. My mum was the last to get it and at age 13 had to look after all her older and younger siblings and her parents. Luckily, they all survived, though two of their neighbours' children died.

(Above will show you that I am a lot older than most MNers. But the faux flu crowd really piss me off so I need to rant) Grin

DH and I both had flu in 1986. I walked into work fine at 9am. By 9.20 I was struggling to drive home and DH found my lying on the hall floor when he came home six hours later. Then he got it and we were so bad that we were nursed and cared for by our DDs - then aged 16 and 13 - for two weeks before we could even get out of bed.

LadyIsabellaWrotham · 03/12/2014 14:52

I wouldn't say "my child was hospitalised with chicken pox therefore you must be lying when you say your spotty but lively child has it". So why do people assume that all influenzas must affect everyone in the same way?

Fallingovercliffs · 03/12/2014 15:05

To be honest LadyIsabella it's more like someone saying 'yes I had a touch of appendicitis the other day. I had to cancel my game of tennis'.

DoJo · 03/12/2014 15:19

This one seems to come up every year, and it does bug me that some people are so quick to diagnose and dismiss others based purely on their own experience. I walked to the doctor's and back with the flu because I could feel myself getting a chest infection and wanted antibiotics in the hope that I would avoid being hospitalised. When I went back to work I was told that I 'obviously' didn't have flu by people banging on about that £50 thing as though my GP is a big drama queen and couldn't possibly know better than them, a team of unskilled administrators.

Similarly, my husband was diagnosed with migraines when his vision went all odd. He didn't have any pain, and could happily sit and watch TV, so according to some people he couldn't possibly have had a migraine.

Can we not just all accept that it's not a competition - when someone else is feeling like shit isn't the time start going on about how they can't possibly feel as bad as you did 20 years ago. Just like anything else, some people are affected worse than others and some are better able to manage their symptoms. Does everyone really need a detailed diagnosis and to acknowledge that other people have felt worse for longer just to get some sympathy for feeling ill?

Poolomoomon · 03/12/2014 15:38

The flu is awful. I've only had it once when I was ten, shortly after Christmas as well. I thought I was going to die. I couldn't move or eat. I didn't wash for an entire week, fucking stunk. Was hallucinating... It's dreadful.

There's always people like this though. Have a bad day, they're depressed. Have a headache, it's a migraine. Cold is a flu. Sickness bug is food poisoning. Sore throat is tonsillitis... I can't tell you how many times my dad's off stomach has been a new food allergy Hmm or his sore throat has been tonsillitis even though he has no tonsils. Drives me to distraction.

LadyIsabellaWrotham · 03/12/2014 15:56

Whilst we all know people who overcook their symptoms, and it is definitely annoying, the consequences of the blanket application of the fifty pound note test can be genuinely dangerous if it leads to people who know they've been exposed to flu and now feel crap breaking quarantine. Clearly the advice during pandemics to stay at home/ not visit your GP etc would be utterly pointless according to this thread because nobody with flu is ever capable of leaving their bed.

Anecdotes of "I had flu once and I was completely incapacitated for a week" are good evidence that influenzas can sometimes be very very bad and dangerous. But unless you were swab tested every other time you felt a bit poorly and flu was ruled out, then they are not evidence that flu is always incapacitating, any more than my DS going to intensive care with chickenpox is evidence that chickenpox always requires hospitalisation. In fact there is lots of good anecdotal evidence from the swine flu epidemic, when people actually did get tested, that it is possible to be merely poorly with flu. Doesn't mean it's not dangerous for the next person who catches it.

pointythings · 03/12/2014 21:36

Grimbletart 1986 was my exam flu year - I was fine in the morning, went on a long ice skating tour with my aunt. By the time we got home I couldn't stand.

And as far as migraines are concerned, I don't get them very often but when I do they are not headaches. They are crippling and leave me flat on my back in a dark room, which is the difference.

Grokette · 03/12/2014 21:50

People say they have the flu when they're snotty.
People say they have a migraine when they have a headache.
People say they have ocd when they've tidied the kitchen cupboards.
People say they have bipolar when they can't make up their minds.
People say they have coeliacs when wheat gives them a tummy ache.

People are stupid Grin

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 03/12/2014 22:13

It's odd isn't it LadyIsabella. The 'you can't get out of bed/pick up a £50 note with flu and if you an it isn't flu' is one of those huge health myths that just keeps going. It doesn't seem to happen with other illnesses.

PacificDogwood · 03/12/2014 22:38

The plural of anecdote does not data make Grin

The same micro-organism can affect different people differently, v true.

bluesbaby · 03/12/2014 22:42

I've had flu a few times. It varies though. Bedbound a couple of times as a child, high fever and hallucinating. A couple of times as N adult. Same again. I once thought I had flu- Turned out it was actually glandular fever. I was ill for over a year and a half. I spent the first six months attending college during waking hours, and sleeping from 4pm-8am. It was bad. Very very bad. Then, because of my compromised immune system, I kept getting mild flu. Fully diagnosed with regular doctor's checks and antibiotics because I had thyroid issues caused by GF. Most of the 'flus at that stage felt like a bad cold compared to GF and I attended lectures when I could.
A few years later, had a series of bad colds (so I thought). Finally go to the doctor. My throat is killing. Turns out I had tonsillitus- over and over again, because my immune system was low. The scars in my tonsils ache even with a bad cold.

StripedOss · 03/12/2014 22:45

i know the difference between a headache and a migraine.. but i dont get painful migraines.. i get the ocular variety that render me completely blind on the right side of my vision for up to an hour, make me slur my speech, lose the ability to string a sentence together, cause paresthesia in my right hand and then leave me with a 'migraine hangover' that can take a couple of days to shift... doesn't mean i scoff at people who get the painful variety.. i just respect that there are different kinds of migraines.

Dumpylump · 03/12/2014 22:54

I was hospitalised with flu two years ago. I narrowly avoided a lumbar puncture as the dr who admitted me initially suspected meningitis. I was feeling too crap to care what they thought I had. It was awful.
I have a photo of dp and the dcs when they came to visit me (I was in isolation ward), all masked up.
It took several weeks for me to get completely better, and I have since been quite scathing of people out shopping, or still at work, who complain that they have flu.......no, I don't think you do!

thedevilinside · 03/12/2014 23:33

I got on a train and commuted home with flu, I had no choice, it came on really suddenly and I was at work. However, I do think swine flu is different, I believe it is still going around, but most of us are semi immune, these weird cold like bugs, with tummy symptoms, I believe to be swine flu. Ever since the swine flu epidemic, I have had something similar each autumn that seems to get more and more mild each year.

IceBeing · 03/12/2014 23:46

I really don't understand why people come out with this crap.

Influenza is a specific type of virus. The common cold is also a specific and different type of virus. There is nothing intrinsic to either of these viruses that means an individual will have worse symptoms with one than the other.

How hard you find it to fight off the virus depends on how prepped your immune system is to fight it. Getting a cold virus in a different part of the world might easily lay you far lower than getting a local variant of a flu virus you have been exposed to on and off for years!

You cannot tell whether it is cold or flu from symptoms alone.

Similarly for migraines. It is a migraine if it meets certain criteria. That doesn't necessarily make it worse than any other headache depending on the symptoms of the person concerned.

LadyIsabellaWrotham · 03/12/2014 23:48

I also got the pain-free stroke-a-like migraines when I was pregnant, not quite as debilitating as StripedOsses, but noticeable enough that I wasn't allowed to go back on the pill postnatally. I could definitely walk around in the sunlight etc. They don't bear any resemblance to a standard headache though.

sharonthewaspandthewineywall · 03/12/2014 23:54

I remember having flu when I was 18 and not being able to move off the sofa and crying for my mum to call an ambulance as I thought I was dying.
She just laughed Angry

shadowfax07 · 04/12/2014 00:16

YANBU. Thankfully, I really don't think that I've ever had flu, (and I never want it) but I have had really, really bad colds followed by chest infections that have laid me low for weeks, and have been sent home from work by my boss.

Migraines, on the other hand, I have about twice a year. I will hallucinate the day before, and the following day the pain is so intense that I can't even roll over in bed without the top of my head feel like it's exploding. Like StripedOss, I get the migraine hangover for a few days. Nothing like a normal headache at all.