No Flu for You!

Up until last year, I'd never gotten a flu shot before. I always considered it good exercise for my immune system to have to fight off an infection from time to time...plus, I kind of didn't want to miss out on my opportunity to take a sick day once in a while...plus, I'd heard some scary things about the flu shot and Guillain-Barré syndrome, and decided I'd rather deal with a few days of coughing over death by paralysis, should it come to that. ...Then I got the flu the spring before last. Wow, what a flu it was! After three days of abject misery, I vowed I would get a flu shot next year, or bust!

And so I did! Flu shots are free under my insurance plan, so it was an easy trip to the doctor for me, and then I was done! I did not get Guillain-Barré syndrome. I did not get the flu. I even only got one cold in late November.

Yes, you heard that right—from December 2016 through August 2017, I was entirely free of respiratory ailments!

I questioned this stroke of good health with all the cycnicism of someone who's caught at least 4 colds a year for as long as she can remember. What made this year different? Was it the fact that I was more assiduous about hand-washing when people around me were ill? Was it because I finally got wise and started taking immunity supplements (olive leaf extract, mainly) every time I traveled and every time I knew of a bug going around? Was it because of my flu shot?

The cold virus isn't the flu virus, sure, but I was willing to attribute any cause to this phenomenon, and a never-before-taken vaccination seemed as good as any. Whatever the reason, I kept news of my healthy streak strictly to myself. I wasn't going to say anything about it until my luck finally broke.

And boy, did it ever break!

In the past month, I caught three colds. The first one — on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, of all the annoying times — started with a sore throat and pretty much ended there. Normally a cold will start in my throat and work its way up to my nose before it finally leaves me. But I was able to go back to work on Tuesday feeling pretty much back to normal, without any nasal symptoms to speak of.

The second cold, on September 25, seemed like it was the remainder of the first cold, come back to finish what it started. It consisted entirely of a stuffy nose. I get unexplained stuffy noses from time to time, but this time I felt certain it was virally related, because along with it came a feeling of complete exhaustion, mild nausea, and general ickiness that usually mean I'm fighting an infection. However, that came and went in less than a full day, so I felt like I got off the hook pretty easily.

The third cold struck on Monday, October 2, and I have to conclude it was the rhinovirus' final attempt at giving me a proper cold with all the symptoms. I hopped into bed on that fateful night and suddenly noticed my throat was stinging a little, but assumed it was from the lemon bar I'd just eaten. The next morning, it was still stinging. But weirdly, I didn't feel sick at all. I got ready for work slowly, searching my body for other symptoms. I didn't find any, but I also didn't start feeling any better. Finally I decided to play it safe and just stay home. For the remainder of that day, the only thing I felt was a burning in my lower throat. It was very uncharacteristic of a cold. Where was that general ickiness? I began to worry all sorts of things—that I'd unwittingly gotten a chemical burn on my throat from using spray paint in an unventilated basement—that a piece of the acidic lemon bar I'd eaten before bed had gotten lodged in my tonsil and was slowly eating away my flesh—that I was having a sudden and serious case of upper esophageal acid reflux. But when I woke up the next morning, I was relieved (can you believe it?) to feel that the soreness had migrated up my throat and was now plaguing my nasopharynx—in the typical pattern of a very common cold. I had not developed acute throat cancer after all. I stayed home again that day, but not because I felt very sick—mainly out of concern for the public health and a desire to not overdo it and start feeling very sick! 

I actually almost enjoyed having this cold. It was bad enough that I had a legitimate excuse to stay home from work, but not so bad that I was consigned to writhing around in my bed for 2 days. I got quite a lot done at home while barely suffering from some very mild symptoms. Never once, in all of these three colds, did I feel feverish. If my throat and nose hadn't been acting up, I probably wouldn't have even known I was sick at all—a far cry from the total debilitation that usually accompanies my colds. So, in short, I don't know whether to feel thankful that I just experienced three of the easiest-to-overcome colds I've ever experienced...or annoyed that they kept on coming. 

Perhaps my three colds in September were my summer cold, spring cold, and winter cold, finally catching up with me. I'd been feeling astonishingly lucky, but everyone's luck must end sometime. Still, if these puny little infections were all that I'm going to get, I'm still pretty lucky!

It makes me wonder if, all those years I thought I was getting really terrible, miserable colds, I was actually getting the flu! If that was the case, I'm never going back to those dark times! I might now be the world's most enthusiastic flu-shot convert, and I'll be going to get my 2017 edition as soon as I'm fully over this cold. And you should too, if for no other reason than to make the title of this post make a little more sense.