Man vs. Pig

Well, it happened, the dreaded, the unthinkable- I got (duh, duh, duh....) swine flu.

First, let's clear up a few myths here. Anyone who has the flu right now has swine flu. The regular ole run of the mill seasonal flu has not yet reared its head. Also, due to the fact that the symptoms of the swine flu are much more mild than the seasonal flu, health care professionals aren't even treating for it unless you are under 5, over 65, or pregnant past your first trimester. The big stink about it is that it is new, period. It's not worse than the regular flu, it's not going to kill off half of the population, it's just the flu. The problem is that since it's new, no one has any immunity to it so it is spreading quite readily. But, if I can survive it, trust me, so can you.

Here's an overview of my battle with the pig:

Saturday was my birthday so I was spending a fun filled day with my family. We (we being my mom, dad, sister, me and Drew) went to Incredible Pizza for lunch and played games. Then Drew and I did some running around until 6:30pm when we went and saw "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" in 3D. That was pretty cool. Then we ate dinner at Cheesecake Factory. A little before the movie, my throat starting hurting a little, but I thought it was just allergies (which have been terrible this year). It got a little worse as the night went on, but nothing to terrible. When we got home from dinner, Drew gave me my present (a pink .38 revolver!) but I was so tired I basically went right to bed.

At 12:45pm on Sunday, Drew finally woke me up. I couldn't believe it, I never sleep that late. And I was still tired! So I basically just laid around on the couch the rest of the day. Around 5pm, I started feeling warm so I took my temperature- 100.0. Not to high, but still not normal. So I called in to work for Monday fearing it might be more than just allergies.

Monday was pretty much the same thing. I was completely exhausted. My joints were achey, my throat still kind of hurt, I had a headache, but most of all I was sooo tired. And my temperature all day Monday was only like 99.2-99.6. It never got back up to, or even over 100. So I called my boss again and she said I needed to go get a flu test. Drew and I went to Urgent Care and my temp was 99.1 and my flu test was negative. But the doctor said I definately had the flu, those tests are only accurate 10-50% of the time. Who knew? So he treated my for bronchitis, said lots of rest and fluids for the flu, and sent me on my way.

So now it is day 5, I'm still home from work, but I am finally feeling better. I know have a nasty sounding cough, but that's the bronchitits talking. The flu wasn't that bad. The most prominent symptom was that I was completely exhausted all of the time. Like today, even though I'm feeling better, I slept till almost 11am (which I never do) and I got up and tried to do some things around the house to get my energy back up, but I will probably take a nap in a little while to tell you the truth. It just sucked all the energy out of me that dern flu.

But the moral of the story is- I survived. It's really not that bad. My temp has been gone for 24 hours so I might try to go to work tomorrow even.

So in this episode of man vs. pig, man won :)