I think I am getting the flu. I say “think” because I don’t actually have full-blown symptoms yet. I’m guessing the reader is now failing their arms, “What are you saying?! Do you want to be sick?”
No, really, I’m not hoping to be sick. I just feel I am being honest with myself by acknowledging that something is not right with me. I tried to search the internet for more information about how the flu develops, but it doesn’t seem easy to find this type information. Yes, you can find a list of common symptoms, but no explanation of the timing of them and their development. I suppose people believe that everyone gets sick differently. But after 20-some odd years of experiencing sickness in my body, I find there is a very standard routine.
If I get a cold, it first begins with slight fatigue. Sometimes, I fail to notice this first sign. I think it’s just due to lack of sleep or working too hard. But the next sign can never be missed: the tell-tale sore throat. It starts as a little scratchy nuisance and then becomes worse and worse. If it’s a bad cold, a headache is also coming on and now I really feel tired. I find myself sneezing more often than usual. By the time I am starting to suck on lozenges or drinking hot water with lemon and honey to soothe my throat, my nose is getting stuffed up. This usually all happens within a day (although the first feeling of fatigue often comes the day before). By the next day, my sore throat is mostly gone but my whole head is replaced with cotton balls (the number of cotton balls correlates to the severity of the cold). I can no longer hear clearly or breathe through my nose. At this moment I know that I definitely have a cold and will probably not being able to breathe through my nose again for at least 3 days. I begin to horde tissues. Usually, my nose starts dripping slowly at first and then grows to an accelerated pace. For the rest of this day and the next, I suffer the wrath of the cold. Usually I don’t have any cough, but I may lose part of my voice if the cold is particuarly bad. Nevertheless, on the third day, I usually wake up for the first time feeling ever so “slightly” better. Although my nose still drips constantly and I might lost my voice, the pressure in my head has decreased slightly. By that night, I usually have accepted my fate and come to peace with suffering a cold. In other words, I believe that I will eventually feel better (on the first and second days, I wasn’t sure about that). The next few days each bring less suffering. The headaches are gone, my hearing is getting better, and the nose flow decreases. Towards the end of the week, my cold symptoms linger in the morning-time but are more or less over. Not too long after, but always longer than I think it should be, I wake up one morning feeling completely normal.
So what about the flu? I have only experienced it once in my life—as far as I can remember. It occurred in winter of 2001, a few months after I had moved to Seattle. I can’t recall the details so well of how it all started. I just remember that in the early stages of it, I was completely exhausted. I spent a lot of time just lying in bed with no energy to do anything else. I also remember realizing at one point that a cold and the flu are completely different, and I will NEVER, EVER mix the two up again. During the flu, I felt that I was going to die. Although I may joke about that during a cold, I really felt it during the flu. I suppose it’s the fever that does it to you. I also developed a bad cough during that time. So bad that I felt I was choking to death if I laid down. So I had to sleep at night propped up with pillows. The worst of it lasted around five days or so, though the effects lingered on much longer. And when I started to get better, I didn’t feel “at peace with my fate”, I felt damn grateful that I was still alive.
And now for recent events. My memory of my last day of wellness goes back to Wednesday. I had a big meeting at work that morning and it had gone well. That afternoon I was back at the desk grinding away on a particularly annoying problem. Goldie and I agreed to meet at 8:00pm for sushi on the island. Around 7:15pm, I realized I was already running late (takes me about an hour to get to the island). So I ran down the hillside to the train station. It was the first time I had real run in a looooong time. Although it was downhill, so it didn’t seem so hard. By the time I got to the train station, I felt a little winded but not too bad actually. My legs were a little wobbly though.
The next day, I could feel my legs aching a little. But it didn’t seem to bad. It was Friday that I really felt something was coming on. I woke up that morning feeling exhausted. I didn’t walk so much as a I stumbled. I still went to work, but by the afternoon, I felt my brain had left the building. I spent a lot of time staring at the computer blankly. On my way back home, I felt like crawling might be easier. That night, I wondered if I should cancel my tutoring lessons for Saturday morning. But I also wondered if a good night’s sleep might be enough to bring me back to life. This morning I woke up feeling tired, but not truly sick in any way. So I went off to tutoring. By the middle of the second lesson, I was counting down the minutes till I could leave. I took the tram instead of walking like usual. The moment I got home, I went straight for the sofa. I haven’t done anything else except take a short excursion to the vet around the corner. Mimi (the kitty) got a rash on stomach, so we had the vet look at it. Just walking around the block once made was enough to get my head hurting. I’m now back at home, lying on the bed.
So, am I sick? I figure that if things don’t get any worse, than I am just suffering from exhaustion (maybe due to the cough that I fought off last week—during some of Hong Kong’s worst ever pollution). But just in case this is the beginning of the flu, I’m trying to prepare psychologically for the rough times ahead.
Finally, I should add that Hong Kong is in the midst of peak flu season. The hospitals are overcrowded and the news is talking about the flu problem every night. So if I’m wrong about having the flu, I could just blame my mistake on the power of media suggestion.