to think I've contracted bubonic plague?

[Ohsolomio]

I haven't left the house in the past two weeks apart from to pop across to the little shop opposite.
I could hear my downstairs neighbours sneezing for the past few days and now I've just had a bout of sneezing. I'm suddenly all bunged up!
I've an interview on Monday and I really could do without sneezing all over them.
Please tell me that I couldn't have contracted a flu or something from downstairs neighbours?
Please tell me I won't look like Rudolph at the damned interview?

And I haven't had my flu shot this year.

Well for a start, you have a cold, not flu or plague.

I have asthma though, so a cold usually leads to a chest infection.

Which the flu shot wouldn’t prevent surely

I've had both pleurisy and pneumonia, so it's a nightmare for me to catch the 'common cold'. I just can't understand how I bloody contracted it.

Well if that’s the case, sneezing during an interview will be the least of your worries.

But you’ve been out to the shops so you have been in contact with people.

Out of interest, I had pneumonia and pleurisy a couple of years ago and I feel like I’ve never fully recovered, and syndicate colds and chest infections really easily. Is this the case for you? Do they ‘weaken’ you on some way? I have never discussed this with my doctor

And I don't know whether it's a flu or not. I have literally started sneezing in the past hour, but I am petrified of being ill again. I don't just get ill, I end up in ICU.

It's airborne. You will have contracted it in the days before showing symptoms, there will have been an incubation period. It could have come from anywhere, including the corner shop.

Then why the hell have you not got your flu jab yet?

Pneumonia can damage the lungs. Don't know about pleurisy (that's the outer fluid lining of the lungs I believe).

I'm so bloody stupid for not getting the flu shot. Idiot.
As an asthma sufferer, you're offered it every year, but of course I was too busy.
I just know I'm going to be screwed with this dose.

If you can type in here, it's not flu

Fishes.

1. I've been in intensive care
2. I've only just started sneezing in the past hour
3. I don't know whether it's cold or flu, but either of them tend to lead to a chest infection at the very least, pneumonia and organ failure at the worst.

Yes but OP gets the worst worst colds in all the world, Fishes!

So it's entirely irrelevant to me whether it's a cold or flu. It will go to my lungs and that's what I'm worried about.

No, the OP has almost died from a 'cold'.

Oh. In your OP it just sounded like you were worried about sneezing in your interview

I am also worried about that Harriet

Going to be very hard to accept a job offer if I'm in Resus.

How come you haven't left the house for two weeks? Is it just logistics or have you been poorly prior to the sneezing?

I know that if I've been cooped up for ages, without a decent dose of fresh air, I start feeling pretty "fluey" myself. I bet you just need a good long walk to blow the cobwebs off. Works for me every time.

Why haven’t you been out of the house for 2 weeks?

Depression.

You’d think then, you’d have made sure you had a flu shot. Because even very healthy robust people can expect a cold in the winter months, it’s pretty much a given.

Oh, I see. Well, I bet every man and his dog has told you to get outside in that case, I've heard it so many times myself. But I honestly think that being cooped up indoors doesn't do you any good at all. Are you on any ADs at the moment?

It's probably just the bad cold that's been going around - I'm just at the tail end of it myself and praying that it doesn't turn into a chest infection - like you, colds end in weeks of coughing for me - at best - and bronchitis or worse if I'm unlucky. I'm usually housebound as a 24/7 carer for my Dad, but he was in hospital for a couple of weeks, so I got to go out - until I caught the cold, of course! Still waiting for our flu jabs here - the home visit list isn't full yet, and they're not sending the nurses out with them until it is, apparently! Good luck for your interview!