to not know the difference between flu and a cold!

[usernameishistory]

I spent the night not moving because I felt so ill, freezing cold, despite many (many!) layers, and needing a pee all night but feeling too ill to have one, despite it eventually really hurting by about 3am. I didn't sleep all night because I just felt too bad and freezing. Is this a cold?

Why can't I tell? Cold the night before, cold again tonight, feeling woozy and wobbly, cough, and pathethic!

Bufferingkisses people always trot that nonsense out.

Flu - rapid onset, fever.
Cold - more gradual onset, not usually a fever.

There is a lot of crossover between mild flu and a severe cold in terms of how unwell you may feel and the whole "£50 on the doorstep" myth trotted out is a load of rubbish, we each have have our own coping limits and individual immune systems react differently to viruses. What may be debilitating to one person might only be a minor inconvenience to the next, it just depends on how badly your body reacts.

I had swine flu, mine wasn't that bad and have been worse with a cold and chest infection.

@Bufferingkisses and @steff13 may you never have flu. (And I mean actual flu - as opposed to a cold!).

Candymay I have had the flu, and I felt like dying. Two of my kids had it, and were barely sick at all. All tested positive for flu at the doctor. The severity of symptoms does not differentiate between a cold and the flu. 🤷

If you have a cold you’re over it in a couple of days. If you have flu it takes a week or to to get over the worst of it, but full recovery can take months. I only got by, by doing the bare minimum and then going to bed as soon as I’d put the kids to bed and sleeping that awful heavy sleep until 7am when I had to get up again. I did that for 3 months before I started to feel properly well again. It was horrendous. Having had it I can totally understand why people can die from it.

I actually couldn't get out of bed to go to the loo, despite it hurting.

Each PM I get shivers again.

I was wearing PJ's, a sweatshirt top, under a thick all season duvet in thick brushed cotton cover with a thick throw on top and a wool blanket from lded double and froze all night, but couldn't move to get a hot water bottle.

I have started having like a line of brights lights in the top right corner of vision that flash every now and again. I feel sick with cough.

The all over hurting is calming down, but was top to toe and I no way of picked upa device to post.

I still feel very woozy and wobbly which I think is like flu.

I can see though that I am completely unreasonable in not knowing the difference! I somehow thought I would be.

Random head pains. Awful congestion.

I've had some hellish colds in my time. When I had flu it took me 6 weeks to feel normal again. Hope you feel better soon Op

Sounds flu like. I love love love the 'if you were that ill you wouldn't be able to type on here' I managed to mumsnet with pneumonia and my friend was messaging me regularly when he was actually dying .
Moving my thumb is fairly straightforward. Getting up to go to the loo wasn't.

Cold - you carry on with work/life

Flu - knocked off your feet can’t even lift a teaspoon never mind a cup of tea.

Hope you feel better soon OP

The temperature is the difference.

I had flu whilst pregnant, I slept solidly for 2 days and didn’t fully recover until the baby was born 2 months later Wish you better, take your temperature, you may be shivering because your body is trying to regulate your temp.

As I understand it there's no certain distinction. Generally flu is more severe, the level of exhaustion and fever it can cause aren't normal for colds. But some people get hit hard by colds and some people get mild symptoms of flu.

It doesn't really matter since for most people the treatment is basically the same. If you're ill you're ill, that's all there is to it. (If you're high-risk you might be offered something like tamiflu for flu).

I’ve only had flu once when I was a teenager and still remember how swiftly it came over me
And how I lost two weeks.
Body aches, weakness, dehydration, fever, shivering. Horrendous sore throat. Think I was delirious at one stage!
I realised that every other thing I’d had that I thought was “flu” was a cold or other virus.

I hope I never ever get flu again and that my
DS doesn’t ever experience it either, it’s hideous. Hard to tell from your post but I suspect even the fact you are able to make a post means it’s not flu

ibreally Think if people understood that ‘only’ a cold could be nasty then the need to call it flu would stop. My mother almost died and spent a week in the ITU with ‘only a cold’.

Yes agree @owlbethere colds can be truly horrendous too

I’ve had flu twice. Once was when I was a student living in halls in a tiny study bedroom. I remember lying there looking at my stereo, which was barely out of arm’s reach, thinking “if I feel too ill to read or do anything else I might as well put the radio on”, but not being up to doing so, then suddenly realizing that six hours had passed and I still hadn’t been able to move enough.

Luckily I had a washbasin in my room so I could get water the next day. But it was terrifying. I could totally understand how people die from it.

Another key difference from colds is, for me, the sheer depression and despair that comes with flu. With a cold I feel crotchety and indignant. With flu I feel an overwhelming horror and desolation.

Flu comes on oh so quick. Like you l went shopping, l was out for a couple of hours and was dying on the way back. Virtually needed carrying home
Definitely. I went down in the changing rooms of Tammy Girl. Obviously this was some years ago. Ended up having 2 weeks off school, had to sleep on the sofa bed in my Dad’s study because I couldn’t manage the stairs, lost loads of weight. I remember trying to talk to a friend on the phone and I just couldn’t do it, even from the sofa. If you’re on here then I’d say that it’s probably not the flu. And if you’re struggling to tell the difference from a cold it’s also unlikely. Colds can still be really nasty though. I hope you feel better soon.

I would take a cold and flu med for those symptoms, it sounds like you may have a fever, seeing lights(optic migraine?) and feeling freezing under a mountain of blankets.

If you are well enough to post on here then you don't have flu.

Wishforsnow is totally correct, and I'm afraid that all the " Trust me, if you have flu then you will know - it is nothing like a cold " type comments are just plain factually incorrect.

I've had flu twice that I know of. The first time was the "hit by a train" kind of illness that most people assume is the only manifestation of influenza. The second time I also had flu (tests proved it as it was during the H1N1 outbreak) and other than a high temperature and a bit of joint pain, I would have sworn it was "just a cold"...

Severe flu is worse than any cold, but loads of people will have had flu and not realised. And their flu strain may have been just as potentially dangerous as any other strain but they were just lucky that they only had mild symptoms.

Flu is an upper respiratory tract infection usually accompanied by a fever, caused by an influenza virus (one of myriads of strains). Influenza type A is usually severe, whereas C is milder (but you still have flu and would still test positive for it).

A 'cold' is an upper respiratory tract infection which may or may not be accompanied by a fever, usually caused by rhinoviruses.

Symptoms are similar. Flu A tends to be the severe, rapidly mutating type with multiple strains and subtypes (think bird flu / swine flu). Flu B mutates less rapidly, can be as severe as flu A but isn't generally as common. Flu C is a mild upper respiratory infection.

Rhinoviruses can affect anywhere - usually in the upper respiratory tract, lower tract infections are rarer but can occur. Symptoms are more of congestion, sneezing, sore throat, headache. They can also be associated with ear infections / ear pain (more so than flu).

Generally speaking, if you have flu A / B you will have the usual upper respiratory symptoms plus joint pains, lethargy, sustained fever, fatigue.

Generally speaking, if you have a cold you will have a cough/sore throat/snotty nose, may not have such a high fever and may have less fatigue.

However. Generally speaking isn't "every case of flu feels like death", "if you can post here you don't have flu" and there are cases of rhinovirus infection that can make you feel truly horrendous.

In practice it shouldn't make a difference unless you have other illnesses where flu may be dangerous (you can get a nasty staph pneumonia on top of flu if you have lung issues or immunosuppression). Keep hydrated, keep warm / cool as temperature directs, take simple anaglesia and anti-inflammatories for symptom control if you need them and seek medical help if you become so unwell you can't cope at home, have difficulty breathing or chest pain, start coughing up blood or any other symptom that worries you.

And stay off work until you're better, everyone else doesn't need it ;)

Doctor told me - you have the flu if there's a £50 note on the floor & you can't get up to pick it up.

What, an actual medical doctor?

Someone here said flu is an upper respiratory tract infection but actually that is not correct. It is a lower respiratory tract infection too (your lungs) which is why you feel you are dying. And why lots of people do in fact die of it. It’s not a sore throat and a cold.

@QueenOfOversharing that’s just not true though, my mother was on life support with the common cold virus.

I do think the onset is a big clue though, the first time (of 2 that I’m aware of) I had flu I got up for school feeling fine and started getting ready, washed my hair... by the time I got out of the shower I felt a bit grim... as I was drying my hair my arms started to feel like lead... by the time I was supposed to leave to catch my bus I could barely lift my head up, my mother took one look at me and sent me back to bed and I didn’t get up again for 2 weeks. Within 45 mins it hit me like a ton of bricks.