flu (not the man-flu varity)
I don’t very often get sick. The occasional cough here and there, a sniffle and then it all vanishes away.
And for the past two years I’ve been getting a flu shot. Which you can never really measure the value of until you don’t have one and BANG you’re hit with the flu.
No, no, I’m not prattling on about a headcold, some of me wishes that I was. I’m talking about the bone shaking, head aching, stomach quaking variety.
The weekend before last was a long weekend in the UK - the last Monday in May is Spring holiday or something - and so I headed over to Dublin for the long weekend to visit Matt.
It was a wonderful weekend; the weather was so much better than in London (it was sunny for one) and Dublin is a lovely place, so when I woke up on Monday morning with a slightly blocked nose and sore throat, I really didn’t think much of it and went running in the sunshine.
Cue Monday night and I was worse for wear. Shaking and coughing and sneezing and groaning, I was not a happy camper. Not happy at all that I couldn’t even get myself up and out to catch my plane booked at 6.25am back to London for work.
If by some divine power, the weather knew I was unwell and in sympathy was crying with me, all day Tuesday it poured in Dublin, which as I spent most of the day in a ball underneath the doona and surrounded by used tissues, didn’t worry me too much except when I decided that I was bad enough to warrant a trip to the local pharmacy, I had to take an excursion that for a healthy person would have been a quick 15 minutes. For me, it was over an hour.
I flew back mid-morning on Wednesday and visited the doctor. You gotta love the flu virus - because it’s a virus the doctor prescribes bed rest. Ha, why can’t he give me something to kill the damn thing and let me continue on as normal. I’m still getting over it now and London’s miserable weather hasn’t helped matters.
I think that the lesson that I have learnt out of this experience is that the Flu Shot is a brilliant thing and I’m never skipping it again.
And that there is a major difference between flu and man-flu.
