November Fever

Yes it is officially flu season. Did you get your flu shot? If you did, that's great for you!

I didn't unfortunately.

There are some places of work that require all workers to have mandatory flu shots for the year. My place is one that doesn't make it mandatory for workers to get the shot. During school though, they make you get it so I remember having to get it because of that.

Flu shots prevent you from getting the flu. It doesn't protect you from the seasonal cold though. So you can still have sore throat, runny nose, fever etc.

During the course of when I got my shots, I became sick soon after. Sick with just regular cold. Not only was my arm in pain from the injection site, but I was sick with a cold.

The last time I had a flu was in 1998...or was it 1997. Sometime in those years. I remember feeling fine for the day, then later on I started to feel a bit funny, then getting chills, fever, and then I vomited all over the floor. I had body aches and couldn't really move much. It took a while to recover, but that was the last memory I had of having the flu. This was before all this flu shot initiation happened.

Then there was one time my fever had spiked to 39.5C, and I woke up with bleeding gums. That freaked the heck out of me. I had never seen that happen before (and I never had that happen again thankfully). I just remembered waking up to my arms covered in spots of blood and wondered what the heck happened; did I kill someone in my sleep? I busted into the washroom, forgetting my mom was in there getting ready for work, and showed her my arms. Then I looked into the mirror and noticed my mouth was full of blood.

Honestly, this was like a scary movie turned to reality. Mom obviously had never seen that before either and then we both started freaking out. That was the only time I remember having to sleep with ice packs all over my body to cool me down. I don't remember if I had body aches or what not, but I didn't vomit.

Fast forward to present day. I've skipped out on the flu shot ever since I started working. A bit of a back story:

I was working a night shift and the lady was coming around with her trolley of candies and flu shot. I wanted the candy so I said sure, give me the flu shot. So she did.

Ever since that shot, I had gotten sick pretty much every month after that. I got sick before Christmas, into the New Year and briefly recovered for a week, before I got sick again. This time I had developed a serious ear infection, which resulted in vertigo and I had to take a week off work because of it. I never recovered because somehow it went to a lung infection which lasted about 2-2.5 months.

During the course of that crazy 3 months that I was sick, I was on 3 sets of antibiotics. Not fun.

Ever since then, I opted out to get my flu shot.

Fast forward to present day. My dad had gotten sick from a trip and had come back with the cold. I did my best to stay away for a bit but even then, when you're stuck under the same roof, there's going to be that possibility of getting sick.

It was Friday. I had gone to work as usual, feeling fine. I was feeling quite energetic actually. Once work was done, I headed to the mall to grab some soup and met up with the bestie for a bit before going home. I had a shower and had some soup.

Then something just didn't feel right.

I started getting chills. This couldn't be food poisoning because I felt fine in my abdomen. Alright then I guess I better bundle up and get cozy to stay warm.

Within the hour, my temperature had gone from 36C to 38.5C. Crap.

Now I knew something was definitely not right because my jawline was really painful, resulting in my head throbbing, my lower back was hurting like crazy, my body everywhere was just aching, and I could feel my heart racing (I counted 100 beats per minute just laying there). Throat and nose felt fine though. Didn't vomit whew.

It took about 4 days to get the temperature down from 38.5 to 36.5 (normally my temperature is 36C or below), but soon after that's when the sore throat and runny nose come in.

Currently I'm still fighting this nasty cold, or flu, or whatever you want to call it. There could be many reasons how I got it, but I suspect it's from dad and also because I hadn't been sleeping well in the week, as well as stress from work.

I don't want to be a hypocrite and say get your flu shot, when I didn't or refuse to. Back in the day, we never had flu shots and we still survived. It's an option to people whether they want to get it or not. Would it have made a difference to me if I got my shot or not? Probably not, because I would still get sick to some degree.

You can only do so much to protect yourself from getting sick.