Has the flu hit your friends and family?

[Bianca and Bernard]

DH had his flu shot and the updated C19 booster on Friday, the 11th.

On Friday night, his gout in his right big toe started acting up; and by Sunday morning, I had to take him to Urgent care to get a prescription. An hour after opening (had an appointment), the waiting room had at least 10 people in it, in various states of sick (coughing, sneezing, moaning, huddled in blankets, etc) and another 3 or 4 that didn't have outward signs of illness. [Related? Not related? We don't know, but he had the same reaction last year, when he got just the flu shot.]

He was home Monday, due to the gout. I drove him to work on Tuesday because he couldn't drive yet, but the gout was receding. Yesterday, he came home after half a day, congested and run down. Today, he's on the couch; congested and run down, and achy.
C19 negative (he's tested daily).

Doc said take cold medicine, and if he's not better by Sunday, go back to urgent care for flu swab.

 

[monsterkitty]

We have a pet therapy dog and we volunteer every Wednesday for a few hours, taking him into patients' rooms. There were so many rooms that we couldn't go in because the patient's doors had the isolation sticker on them. The nurses said it's the flu and RSV for most of the rooms. A few were COVID patients.

While hospital had a lot of patients, we were only there for an hour because of so few rooms we could go in.

The one positive was that there were 3 babies born while we were there!

 

[ambula603]

My 11-year-old daughter caught the flu 3 weeks ago. Had the highest fever we've ever had in our house (105.6) and was out of school for 5 days. Thought she was better, but she has since had TWO more rounds of the illness. This week it was a fever of 104.5. She just can't get well. Mostly she has a horrible headache and has slept all day and night.

She also had Benign acute childhood myositis due to the flu and couldn't walk normally for about 4 days. So even though she felt a little better, she still couldn't go to school.

I received my flu shot in October and despite taking care of her for the past few weeks, have remained healthy.

 

[DLgal]

My 11-year-old daughter caught the flu 3 weeks ago. Had the highest fever we've ever had in our house (105.6) and was out of school for 5 days. Thought she was better, but she has since had TWO more rounds of the illness. This week it was a fever of 104.5. She just can't get well. Mostly she has a horrible headache and has slept all day and night.

She also had Benign acute childhood myositis due to the flu and couldn't walk normally for about 4 days. So even though she felt a little better, she still couldn't go to school.

I received my flu shot in October and despite taking care of her for the past few weeks, have remained healthy.

That is so hard. Sorry your child has gone through all that. My son missed 9 days of school at the start of the year. He was SO sick and miserable. I was so glad to have masks. I never got sick either.

 

[LuvOrlando]

DH had his flu shot and the updated C19 booster on Friday, the 11th.

On Friday night, his gout in his right big toe started acting up; and by Sunday morning, I had to take him to Urgent care to get a prescription. An hour after opening (had an appointment), the waiting room had at least 10 people in it, in various states of sick (coughing, sneezing, moaning, huddled in blankets, etc) and another 3 or 4 that didn't have outward signs of illness. [Related? Not related? We don't know, but he had the same reaction last year, when he got just the flu shot.]

He was home Monday, due to the gout. I drove him to work on Tuesday because he couldn't drive yet, but the gout was receding. Yesterday, he came home after half a day, congested and run down. Today, he's on the couch; congested and run down, and achy.
C19 negative (he's tested daily).

Doc said take cold medicine, and if he's not better by Sunday, go back to urgent care for flu swab.

Why wait for the Flu Swab? That Tamiflu is magic but they won't give it after 48 hours, it's worth the copay if someone needs to work and it sounds like your DH was already out a bit. Probably caught something from the sick people at urgent care, when I am in those places this time of year I cover up like I'm on a Haz-Mat team. Hope he feels better soon.

 

[VandVsmama]

You guys are basically hitting home the point that I was making to DH just 2 days ago. He said that his shoulder was bothering him from lifting weights at the gym and he was thinking of going to urgent care about it.

I told him, "Be prepared to come home infected with RSV, flu, COVID, or all of the above. The urgent care doctor will tell you go to home, take some ibuprofen, and call your PCP. So skip all that and just make a PCP appointment instead and avoid getting a virus."

 

[magik]

I always thought RSV was a once in a blue moon type illness. Now "RSV" word is thrown around as much as flu.
Is RSV part of the cold family?

I think in the past a lot of different viruses with similar symptoms were all just called “colds” even though they were all caused by very different viruses. RSV in healthy adults has symptoms that are usually cold-like. In small children and immune-compromised people however, RSV can be really serious and lead to hospitalization. I don’t think it’s necessarily circulating a lot more now than before, it just wasn’t tested for as much before unless the person had the severe symptoms versus the cold-like symptoms. With Covid around, a lot more things are being tested for to rule things in or out. Most of the people I know who have gone to the doctor lately with respiratory symptoms get tested for Covid, flu, and RSV when in the past they might just get tested for flu and if that’s negative the doctor would usually shrug and say “It’s probably a virus - rest, fluids, medicine to ease symptoms, come back if it gets worse.”

We’ve had major flu A outbreaks in some of the schools near me. One of the high schools near me had more than 50% of the students and a large chunk of staff out sick with flu A the week following their homecoming. My state is “purple” (very high) on the CDC flu activity map, and I’m definitely seeing that. It doesn’t help that flu is spiking before most people usually get flu shots so there aren’t a lot of people with any sort of protection yet during the spike.