Currently (and intermittently since Wednesday) I have a high temperature, aching joints and muscles, sore throat, chesty cough, aching & tight chest, headache and a nose which manages to be both running and blocked at the same time. My hearing is accompanied by a rattling noise in my right ear with anything above middle c and I feel terrible. This ticks more than enough boxes to count as swine flu (whether it actually is or not).

Just to put it in perspective - as a flu like illness goes it's not as bad as I seem to make out above, more like a bad cold.

Paracetomol helps, so I was able to play in the Blackpool festival yesterday but I didn't play well & the wheels came off rather in the Liszt.

I'm off to bed for the rest of the weekend.

Hope you feel beter soon. Not a lot you can do about flu but sit it out.....Gin and tonic helps

Get better soon

Hope you are better very soon. My little one had it and it only lasted 5 days, so you are well on the way.
Bev .

Hope that you feel better soon.

Physician - heal thyself!

Hope you're better soon

As some of you know, I've been unwell now for two weeks (though much better than I was!). I had all the symptoms you describe but without much of a temperature and no ear problems - when I saw the doctor on Thursday (about a completely different thing) she said that like every autumn/winter, there are lots of 'community' viruses going around! I'm just left now with a slight sniffle and a persistant cough (which she rightly says is a 'post viral cough'!) Hope you feel better soon.

David

get well soon Robodoc and David...

There seems to be a lot of it about.
It's taken me almost a fortnight to feel something like fully recovered after some sort of virus which managed to get the whole family(me, husband, older granddaughter..who may have been the one to start it off.... both daughters and partners) at once.

Yes, get well soon all who are poorly.

I'm hoping (and trying to convince myself) that mine is just a bad cold....

I was diagnosed with swine flu a fortnight ago and am still feeling very under the weather. My chest seems to rattle... I was in bed for almost 10 days though and collapsed at one point when I attempted to get up, so I think I had quite a bad bout of it. Get well soon Robodoc. xx

Our GPs just say, there is something going round the Valley!

I've had virus-ey symptoms for over 6 weeks now Very very frustrating when you know there's nothing you can do really but ride it out as best you can

get well soon Chev...

Im sick tooo either tonsilitis or laryngitis (again!)

Still off work, spending most of the time in bed, coughing like a heavy smoker and feeling generally like something the forum filters would probably stop me writing. Can't concentrate, can't play the flute at all (breathing deeply enough causes havoc with the coughing) and have hardly played the piano all week. Cancelled lessons, cancelled a performance, haven't been out of the house for days.

I'm so bored! I guess that means I'm getting better!

I'm just waiting to see if I caught it from the patient I visited last week, who had to be hospitalised with it....

....and have been vaccinated today, just in case I didn't.

get well soon...

Hope you feel better soon Robodoc!
I know how you feel as I've just been through it and am still finding very difficult to get over it. Piano practice has suffered A LOT. Also just like you I was stuck indoors for a few days VERY bored and not being able to get on with anything.
Hope you recover soon.
All the very best!

I'm just about getting over whatever I had (and it's been three weeks so far) - I've no idea whether it was the flu, or one of the other 'community viruses' which the doctor suggested it might be. The main feature seemed to be a horrid cough and just feeling rather achy and under the weather. The cough has got better, but is still bad in the mornings - it seems to be the one thing I can't shift.

Now my dad is coughing like mad - it sounds far worse than what I had and I can see that if he's not careful, he's going to end up in hospital with it. I'm generally reasonably resillient to these things (though this has been a long haul), but he always gets them bad and I'm sure his diabetes makes them worse.

I kind of wish I knew whether it's been swine flu or not...

Me too!!! I have no idea if it was the swine flu. I just hope it was as I'm not ready for another flu right now!!!!

Hope everyone who has flu/swins flu recovers quicky.

I had the vaccine on Tuesday and felt ill for 36 hours.

Well, that's not really unexpected if you think about exactly what a vaccine is

I didn't say it was unexpected. It was more annoying and inconvenient than anything else!

Originally I'd wanted to put off vaccination until after the weekend, as I'm on call tomorrow, and visiting friends and recordering on Saturday and Sunday.... but as everyone at work pointed out, there's never a convenient time to do it, and the weekend following I'm heading Doon Sooth for more recorder and friends-related things. I know I'm not that likely to get as sick as our patient even if I do get the real thing, but still could not really be doing with getting it if it's avoidable, so vaccination is definitely the lesser evil. We've had to send one of our staff back home about five times in the last week because he keeps coming back in before he's better .
Robodoc, hope you're well soon, but also don't do the hero thing of going back to work too quickly (medics are notorious for doing this....).
And get well soon everyone else too.
I understand that not so very many of the tested illnesses have turned out to be swine flu - but labs have in any case had to stop routine testing cos they'd just be swamped.

Yes we are: The BMJ a few years ago published a "personal view" from a GP who said that he thought it was immoral (!) for a doctor to take time off sick: He felt he "owed it to his patients" to be there for them. This struck, and still strikes, me as worse than ridiculous. I discussed this with my boss at the time, who astonished me by agreeing with him and told me that he himself had never taken a day off sick, not even when he had Legionnaires disease. He wasn't too pleased when I asked him how he managed to do ward rounds when he was on a ventilator!

I have taken time off sick over the years with, among other things; Salmonella gastroenteritis, Campylobacter gastroenteritis (two ways to lose 2 stone in a fortnight - I don't recommend it), Pneumonia, Appendicitis, incapacitating back pain and now (putatively) swine flu. Not only do I not regret it, I fail to see how it was avoidable.

I long ago abandoned any idea that it was somehow wrong for a doctor to take time off sick: On the contrary, doctors should be encouraged to take time off more willingly, particularly if they would be a danger to patients, either because of transmission of disease or (more likely) because under the influence of either disease or medication, their ability to perform the job, in particular their judgement, may be impaired.

What's heroic about infecting your colleagues and your patients? Nothing!
What's heroic about avoidable medical errors? Nothing!

Doctors who struggle back to work when they shouldn't are not heroes - they are fools. Worse, they are dangerous fools.

Would anyone else like a go on the soapbox?

I agree with you Robodoc - I find people who 'struggle bravely' through illness to be at work thoroughly irritating. They're not helping at all, can't operate at full capacity and often just infect co-workers - and in the case of doctors - patients too.

It's often due to a misguided sentiment of not being able to let others do your job, or of showing how dedicated you are. Far from impressing people, though, it generally just annoys them.

I'd rather people stayed at home and got well - especially medical staff who have to see people in weakened states of health as part of their daily job.

Hope you feel better soon.

Yes, thanks for the invitation.

A couple of years ago, when working as a consultant, I stood talking to a young member of staff in my client's office; she didn't look too well. When we finished she turned round and walked…. into the door. Feeling a little concerned I asked her if she was OK. "Yes", she replied, "but I've got terrible flu". "Go home", I said, naively. "Oh no", came the reply, "management don't like it if we stay off with ‘just’ flu." I went back to the firm three weeks later to discover 40% of staff members were sick – with flu, of course.

I have to admit this kind of stupidity, on the part of staff and even worse of management, makes my blood boil. Like you, I utterly fail to see the ‘heroism’ of infecting an entire office and heaven knows how many other people on public transport. It's, frankly, too stupid for words!!! Maybe I'm particularly sensitive because, as a self-employed person, I don't get sick leave, etc. and can ill (no pun intended) afford to be infected by this form of ‘heroism’

PS Hope you're better soon.

It also irritates me when people get on to a packed commuter train, coughing and spluttering. It's damned selfish and is mostly borne out of an inflated sense of self-importance IMO.

FWIW, I'd be shocked if I went to see my GP only to find that he was more ill than I was!

That sounds like it should be a Local disease for Local people



Of course doctors (nurses, dentists, etc) should be going off sick when necessary. If I'm visiting the doctor or in hospital, it's usually because I am unwell in some way. I don't want to catch whatever the doctor has on top of what I've already got - especially as being ill I may catch it more easily or more severely! The general public will probably complain if they have their operation cancelled because the surgeon is sick, or have to wait longer because there are fewer GPs available because of absences, but they'd complain a whole lot more if the medic's illness caused them any problems (unfortunately, the medics will get ranted at/about either way...!)

Sorry to hear you have had it so bad Rob. Hope you are back to normal very soon.
Whatever you do, DON'T TURN THE TV ON. Day time telly is dire and will make you even more ill.
BEv

I'm Jeremy Kyle, and YOU'RE SCUM!!!!!

I too wouldn't want to be seen by a sick doctor.

I hope you feel better soon. My son had a relatively mild dose, they tested them at his school, and saw it as a lgreat excuse to have a few extra days off. The cough lingered for quite some time after though.

Ah, now, there IS a reason for that:

Viruses (not all admittedly but enough and certainly a lot of the ones that cause common cold and/or flu-like illnesses) tend to damage mucosal linings (nose, sinuses, throat, lungs and so on), specifically structures on cell surfaces called cillia: The flow of mucus around such membranes is an active process and is achieved by the co-ordinated movement of these cillia (made from microtubules). If the virus damages the cillia then the cillia have to grow back before mucus flows normally. This takes several days or even a week or two. In the meantime mucus builds up in the nose and sinuses or in the lungs, except when expelled by coughing, sneezing, blowing the nose etc. For this reason catarrh, blocked nose, coughing and so on can persist for 2-3 weeks after the primary infection has completely cleared. Apart from the placebo effect, antibiotics are only of any use if this pooled mucus develops a secondary bacterial infection, which is rare.

No breakfast for me after reading that....

LOL at the last post.
Are you a GP or a doctor in a hospital Robo-doc?
Hope you are all better now! I have to go get the vaccine on Saturday.
PSL