Cold? Virus?

This winter people on the island have been falling like flies with a nasty virus.

Through December and the first part of January my friends were dropping all around me while I carried on, un-virused. Maybe I’ll make it through the winter without getting sick, I thought.

Hah.

There was that moment in mid-January when I knew. The knowledge came up from the cellular level: the virus has moved in.

Does anyone else have that experience? Your body telling you when you’ve been infected, days before you develop symptoms? I can’t be the only one.

On the evening of Wednesday, January 22, my throat began to feel sore, and my head began to ache.

By morning I was toast. Sore throat, head congestion, chest congestion, and a fatigue I describe as feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck.

After five days it felt like a smaller truck, and the chest congestion had matured into a juicy and extremely productive cough. The cough caused me to lose my voice. Couldn’t yell at the dog to stop barking.

Digression: I have a string of bells hanging from the doorknob on the front door. They ring whenever someone comes in or goes out, and Marley runs over to the door and barks every time the bells ring. Lately I’ve noticed that whenever a bell rings on television, even one lone ding, she runs over to the front door and barks. Of course she also barks if I set a spoon on the table and it makes a noise. She barks at any random noise, but this television bell thing is new. End of digression.

Around days eight and nine the virus was beginning to feel like it was going to go on forever.

On day ten, I had the first moments of feeling human.

On day eleven I was feeling even more human, but not yet fit for human company.

Day thirteen and the end was in sight, though I wasn’t making any fast moves.

Some of the people who have had this virus have been so sick that they have been calling it the flu. I am sure that some of you have had the flu. What I have had is a nasty virus, or a bad cold.

Influenza is different. Two of the main differences between this virus and the flu virus would be the body aches and the high fever the flu gives you. I was running a low fever. Never hit 100.

For another thing, influenza is more likely to kill you than a cold virus. In the 2017-2018 season the flu outdid itself and killed a record 79,400 people, as estimated by the Center for Disease Control. Last winter was a more normal year. Only 61,200 flu deaths. Looked it up on the internet. It must be true.

I had the flu in 1993. I had a high fever, splitting headache, horrible aching in every part of my body – I could swear that even my hair hurt - and I was semi-delirious, thrashing about in the bed for a couple of days. After that Rick said I lay in bed looking like I was dead for a few days.

It was debilitating. I was puny for weeks. Months. That’s the sickest I have ever been in my adult life. That’s when I started getting flu shots every year.

This year I got the senior flu shot. Oh lordy. The elderly, of which I am now one, dammit, get a high dose shot of vaccine. My arm was sore for days. Worth it, though.

I am amazed by the number of people I meet who don’t get flu shots, saying that flu shots give them the flu. Hunh.

My deepest sympathies to those of you who have had the flu, as well as to those of you who have had this virus. They are both rotten.

Right now there is panic about the coronavirus, fresh from China, because it is new to humans, and it seems to be spreading fast. People are tossing around words like “pandemic.” The one person who came home to Washington from China with the coronavirus got over it. Let’s hope that’s the extent of our exposure until there is a vaccine or a successful treatment.

Meanwhile, what to do? The usual: wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes, and avoid sick people (right). Get your rest, drink water. Listen to Grandma.

Post Script, March 2020: Sure got it wrong about that one person being the extent of our exposure. The coronavirus has been declared a pandemic. Many cities in the US are on lockdown, in hopes of curtailing the spread. "Flattening the curve," they call it. I'm staying home until - well, I don't know when.