Are any of you having trouble shaking ....

timer lady

Queen of Hearts
the influenza. I'm going into the 4th week of this stuff. While the cough is finally gone the level of exhaustion is extreme. I sit down & I'm asleep within 10 minutes.

Didn't get the flu shot this year - geeez!
 

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
I'm sorry, Linda. People around me have dropped like flies. I swear by the flu shot. Next year I'm going to get the pneumonia shot, too (hey, I'm old!).

Have you tried my fail-safe remedy for these kinds of ailments?

A shot of brandy and 2 tylenol. You will sleep like a baby.

Hope you feel better soon!

Suz
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I have been sick for months it seems. Ok...not really but at least a month. It has now moved into bronchitis and I am literally coughing a lung up every time I try to lay down which makes sleeping tough.

May have to try that brandy method.
 

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
Janet, if it's bronchitis and you are coughing up nasty stuff you need an antibiotic. I had that every year when I smoked- I am an expert on bronchitis. It's how I developed my brandy remedy. The brandy soothes all the way down and knocks you out while you're at it.

Take care of yourselves, you two!!!

Suz
 

timer lady

Queen of Hearts
My doctor ordered the flu & pneumonia shots for me next year. I've had pneumonia or bronchial pneumonia on average once a year since the tweedles have been with us. This year with the flu & resultant bronchial crud, I'm down in the dumps.

Suz, don't have brandy in the house - I believe that I have a bit of Irish whiskey stashed somewhere. Hmmmm, have to check it out.

Janet, I've been sleeping sitting up for the past month...I actually slept in bed twice this week.

I've run the vaporizer almost none stop for the past 3 weeks.

Yup, the whiskey & tylenol sounds like it just may do the trick tonight.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I just went and got put on the z pack. Im praying it starts to help soon.

Ive been drinking bottles of Tussin DM and chopping up pain pills to get a bit of codeine.

Oh...and I have decided that I simply must bite the bullet and give up cigs if I want to stop this. I have one more pack in my carton and then I wont be buying anymore. I have an old bottle of wellbutrin xl that I started myself on today to see if that helps me.

Ok...bipolar, sick, trying to kick cigs, and adding an antidepressant...should be a fun time round here!
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
I've been sick with either the same cold for over three weeks or two different colds in that time frame. It's possible I may have had a touch of the flu last week. I'm still dragging. And I did get my flu shot.
 

JJJ

Active Member
We're all sick here too. I longingly remember pre-children when husband and I would both be sick and we'd stay home from work and hide under the covers, watch Babylon 5 and eat chicken soup. It was so relaxing.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Linda and Janet

I don't know about where you are, but here you're allowed 2 bottles of cough syrup with codeine without a script per yr. All you have to do is ask the pharmacist. Sounds like you both have that really nasty strain that can take forever to get over, especially the fatigue.

So far I've been lucky. (and I just knocked on wood) I've not really been sick this season. Well, with viruses anyway. It's kicking the begebies out of our schools down here. One system shut down for several days due to poor attendence from both teachers and students.

Poor Darrin's been sick more than well between viruses and an ear infection that so far antibiotics won't kill.

You guys take care of yourselves.

Hugs
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
About a week ago all the schools here and in the surrounding counties were closed for several days because so many kids were out sick.

I don't think what I have is actually the flu, because I only feel bad at work! I think it's something to do with the heat in my office. LOTS of cold air coming in around old windows and the only heat is a thing on the wall that blows hot, dry air right in my face!
 

everywoman

Well-Known Member
I am still not feeling 100% with the flu. I'm with the rest of you: I will have the flu shot and pnemonia shot on time from now on. I've taken the flu shot every year since I had a bad case of the flu. I got the pnemonia shot this year the day they let me out of the hospital with pneumonia!!! (How ironic is that?) You only have to have the pneumonia shot every five/ten years.

Janet, I am still working on quitting. I guess like an alcholic is always an alcoholic, I will always be a smoker---I am just choosing not to smoke. But, oh, I do miss having a cigarette after a meal, and while driving, and....

Janet,
Last night husband and I drove 150 miles one way to pick up difficult child to bring him home. Almost there, husband wants a cigarette. I asked him to wait. I told him that he had said if I stayed away after going back to work, he would quit, too. He pouted: But I like smokng, I don't want to quit. I told him that I like it too, but that I knew it was better for me not too, so I choose not to. He laughed and said, you like to smoke, then smoke! Just pull over, get a pack, and we'll smoke one together. I told easy child and difficult child that he was trying to pressure me into smoking again. But it was all in jest. I laughed at the silliness of his needing to smoke!
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Katmom..

I quit smoking in 1990. I was a two pack a day smoker and I completely went cold turkey and just quit. I couldnt even be around cigs or people who smoked for quite awhile when I first stopped. It took a conscious effort on my part NOT to reach up at the store and grab a pack. I walked around vending machines to avoid them. I wouldnt even go outside with friends who I knew were going to be smoking.

By say year 4 or 5 I could be around smokers again and even "watch" their cigs for them to run to the bathroom. I actually held one. That was probably the start of the downfall. We caught Cory sneaking and smoking cigs with some older teen boys when he was 10 and we decided to use that famous old method to teach him. I went and bought a pack of generic non filter kings. I lit them and then made him smoke as many of them as he could choke down. He was gagging and puking on the front lawn. Problem was I was getting nicotine back in me again. This was also right at the time a really stressful situation was going on at work and I picked up a cig from one of my friends about a week later and I started back. Within 2 weeks I was back to smoking 2 packs a day.

Cigs are just like alcohol...you cannot take the first drag. If you do you will be right back where you started. I rue to the day I ever picked it up again.
 

Abbey

Spork Queen
Try living in Vegas and quit smoking. It's everywhere.

My students are dropping like flies, and this has been going on for months. I was starting to think that maybe we had mold in our building. I wake up fine, but within 15 minutes of going to work, we're all coughing, sneezing, etc.

Never had a flu shot. I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to shots. Last one I had was in 1972 after our city flooded. It's odd...I don't mind blood being drawn, but putting something IN
Abbey
 

Marguerite

Active Member
It's funny, in some areas people seem to smoke more than in other areas. It's not a class thing, although I do think it's at least partly cultural. We've found when we go outside Australia, we see so much smoking everywhere. And in some parts of Australia where you have pockets of people from other cultures, you get a big increase in smokers. In Australia smoking is now banned in all public buildings; in restaurants and clubs; on ALL transport; you have to book a smoker's room in hotels, if you want to smoke. Workers get cigarette breaks when they need to duck outside for a quick gasper. Increasingly, this is being discouraged. It's easier to quit. We have government and non-profit campaigns to help people to quit. Anyone dropping a cigarette :censored2: is liable to a heavy fine for littering, or even for risking starting a fire. Tossing a cigarette :censored2: out the car window in a dry country area can get you lynched.

Nobody in our family smokes. We have never had anyone smoke a cigarette inside our house. We've had smokers visit, but they ALL smoke outside. I will sit outside with them while they smoke and we drink coffee. We don't own ashtrays. Used to - don't know where they went.

husband & I both grew up in homes where parents smoked. His parents quit when he was very young. My mother never smoked - she had bad asthma and it would have killed her. Living with a smoker was bad for her health, though. My father finally quit when I was about 16. He's been told he would only live another five or ten years because of his emphysema. So he simply stopped. He had tried to quit before, but he now turned his addiction for cigarettes into a determination to quit AND get fit.
He carried his last pack in his shirt pocket. He wrote on it in red pen "Smoking is bad for you!" "Smoking kills!" "You will die if you smoke any of these!" (this was in the days before warnings printed on packs). So when mates at work bludged a cigarette off him, it was a bit embarrassing to pull out the packet he'd written over, but it did stop him taking one too. And when the packet was empty (emptied by his mates) he had no more. And he never smoked again. No gum, no patches - just cold turkey. Bu he did begin to gain a lot of weight.

Once he retired, he joined a fitness centre. I remember seeing this supposedly old, emphysematous man doing bench presses with the best of them. husband & I couldn't keep up! My dad eventually bought a home gym, set it up in his garage and would work out every day at 4 am. He would be in there before sunrise, the doors wide open so he could see the sun rise over the ocean as he exercised. So HE got to see Halley's Comet on its way to the sun, when everyone else stayed in bed and said, "We'll get a good look on the way back." But it was too far from the sun on the way back to be seen much at all. He was very smug!
And he lived a healthy, active life for another 25 years after he had been told, "five or maybe ten, if you quit now."
And what killed him - a dormant TB bacillus (there since 1940) that took over when he got shingles, and he had to stop exercising, having physiotherapy and was put on steroids. Then collapsed lungs (from the TB) and getting an infection from the heart-lung machine in his second operation. He STILL lived another two years, back home enjoying his view of the ocean. Tough old coot.
Without the TB we'd still have him, remarkably fit and still working out in his garage gymnasium.

So if you CAN give up smoking, it's remarkable what you can do to regain and keep your health.

Marg
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Suz,

Did you know that they now have a Shingles vaccine for us golden oldies?

They recommend it starting at 60 but I'm going to see if I can get it the next time I go to the doctor. I know lots of people who have gotten Shingles in their fifties and it laid them out.

~Kathy
 

wakeupcall

Well-Known Member
Folks, my husband smoked for 30+ years. He has quit now, but barely over a year after he quit, it was discovered he had kidney cancer. The tumor weighed ten pounds and to remove it the surgeon had to also remove his kidney. Thankfully, it appears it has not metastacized.....we'll know more in April. PLEASE quit smoking. His surgeon said it was a direct result of smoking. We are lucky to live near MD Anderson Cancer Hospital. Funny, he's not wanted a cigarette since.....
 
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