One morning I had a bit of a dry throat and just a cough or two, and by the early afternoon I was lying in bed shaking violently with chills, had a thumping headache, horribly uncomfortable chesty cough, slight delirium, and was too weak to stand up. Nope - not "just a bad cold". Far more intense, and utterly impossible to just "fight through it" and keep doing normal stuff in life. I'll end up being off work for nearly two weeks.
The extremely intense symptoms only lasted a couple of days, but then a slightly "lighter" version of them has continued for well over a week now. I'm still not really up for much. Mostly because I get fatigued super easily. Up and about for 20 minutes, and have to sit down. And it's both mental as well as physical energy that's easily drained like that.
Funny that it took until I was 36 years old to learn that this difference is quite real. Thinking back now, I don't think I've actually had influenza more than 3-4 times before. I've had some bad colds and various random respiratory infections, but not too many actual flus before. I guess it was just very unmistakable this time (the symptoms were very textbook), so the comparison with minor colds I've had in the past couple of years was very stark.
It's a beautiful day out there. It's been quite nice and Spring-like for most of last week. I've been able to enjoy a little bit of it here and there. Just short little walks near my house. I'll hopefully be 100% in another few days or a week or so - and from now on I'll get my flu shots every year, and never mistake the flu for "just a bad cold", ever again.
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