I have been sicker in the past ten days than I have ever been in my whole life.  Even sicker than when I had mononucleousis in the spring of my Senior year in high school in 1971.  Back in those days, if you got mono, you didn't take prednisone and go back to school in a couple of days, like you do now.  You just waited it out and it could be pretty bad. 

In my case, my blood count when I had mono was such that at first there was some concern, I found out later, that I had leukemia.  In other words, I had it pretty bad.  I was out of school for a full month.  I spent my nights fast asleep with no wakefulness.  I spent my days fast asleep on the couch, waking up only when my mother wanted me to eat something.  Seeing as I lost 25 lbs. in 25 days, it wouldn't appear she was very successful.  As I was college bound and had already been accepted by the college of my choice, there was some question whether this would interfere with that.  I was soooo sick. 

Having said all of that, I will say that what I have is worse.  Way worse.  I haven't lost any weight as far as I know, and I'm not sleeping all day.  In fact, when I try to sleep all I can hear is the rumbling in my chest.  The hacking cough has forced me to sleep on the couch so my husband can get some rest, and the up and down low grade temps leave me alternately shivering and sweating.  The cough, one unlike any I have ever had, is so violent that they wrack my whole body and have caused broken blood vessels in unusual places. 

I am not exaggerating when I say that at one point I begged God to take me out of my body.  I can understand now how this seemingly common little 'bug' can kill unsuspecting individuals who catch it.  In fact, two young children, one a seven year old and the other a baby died this week in NY from exactly what I have.  There is nothing you can do for this.  Antibiotics do not work for viruses.  You just suffer through it. 

Next year I will, most likely, get the vaccine.  All I know is, I don't EVER want to get this again.  Believe me, it's not just the 'flu'.  It demands a little more respect than that.  From now on I'll always call it 'influenza'.

Influenza

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Influenza Classification & external resources
TEM of negatively stained influenza virons, magnified approximately 100,000 times
ICD-10	J10., J11.
ICD-9	487
DiseasesDB	6791
MedlinePlus	000080
eMedicine	med/1170  ped/3006
MeSH	D007251

Influenza, commonly known as flu, is an infectious disease of birds and mammals caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae (the influenza viruses). The name influenza comes from the Italian: influenza, meaning "influence", (Latin: influentia). In humans, common symptoms of the disease are fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort.^[1] In more serious cases, influenza causes pneumonia, which can be fatal, particularly in young children and the elderly. Although it is sometimes confused with the common cold, influenza is a much more severe disease and is caused by a different type of virus.^[2] Influenza can produce nausea and vomiting, especially in children,^[1] but these symptoms are more characteristic of the unrelated gastroenteritis, which is sometimes called "stomach flu" or "24-hour flu."^[3]

Typically influenza is transmitted from infected mammals through the air by coughs or sneezes, creating aerosols containing the virus, and from infected birds through their droppings. Influenza can also be transmitted by saliva, nasal secretions, faeces and blood. Infections also occur through contact with these body fluids or with contaminated surfaces. Flu viruses can remain infectious for about one week at human body temperature, over 30 days at 0 °C (32 °F), and indefinitely at very low temperatures (such as lakes in northeast Siberia). Most influenza strains can be inactivated easily by disinfectants and detergents.^[4][5][6]

Flu spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, killing millions of people in pandemic years and hundreds of thousands in non-pandemic years. Three influenza pandemics occurred in the 20th century and killed tens of millions of people, with each of these pandemics being caused by the appearance of a new strain of the virus in humans. Often, these new strains result from the spread of an existing flu virus to humans from other animal species. A deadly avian strain named H5N1 has posed the greatest risk for a new influenza pandemic since it first killed humans in Asia in the 1990s. Fortunately, this virus has not mutated to a form that spreads easily between people.^[7]

Vaccinations against influenza are usually given to people in industrialized countries with a high risk of contracting the disease,^[8] and to farmed poultry.^[9] The most common human vaccine is the trivalent influenza vaccine that contains purified and inactivated material from three viral strains. Typically this vaccine includes material from two influenza A virus subtypes and one influenza B virus strain.^[10] A vaccine formulated for one year may be ineffective in the following year, since the influenza virus changes rapidly over time and different strains become dominant. Antiviral drugs can be used to treat influenza, with neuraminidase inhibitors being particularly effective.

Flu

Influenza Virus Avian influenza Flu season Research Vaccine Treatment Genome project H5N1 strain

[edit] Etymology

The term influenza has its origins in 15th-century Italy, where the cause of the disease was ascribed to unfavourable astrological influences. Evolution in medical thought led to its modification to influenza del freddo, meaning "influence of the cold." The word "influenza" was first used in English in 1743 when it was borrowed during an outbreak of the disease in Europe.^[11] Archaic terms for influenza include epidemic catarrh, grippe (from the French.), sweating sickness, and Spanish fever (particularly for the 1918 pandemic strain).^[12]

[edit] History

Further information: Influenza pandemic, Spanish flu

The influenza viruses that caused Hong Kong Flu. (magnified approximately 100,000 times)

The difference between the influenza mortality age-distributions of the 1918 epidemic and normal epidemics. Deaths per 100,000 persons in each age group, United States, for the interpandemic years 1911–1917 (dashed line) and the pandemic year 1918 (solid line).^[13]

The symptoms of human influenza were clearly described by Hippocrates roughly 2,400 years ago.^[14][15] Since then, the virus has caused numerous pandemics. Historical data on influenza are difficult to interpret, because the symptoms can be similar to those of other diseases, such as diphtheria, pneumonic plague, typhoid fever, dengue, or typhus. The first convincing record of an influenza pandemic was of an outbreak in 1580, which began in Asia and spread to Europe via Africa. In Rome over 8,000 people were killed, and several Spanish cities were almost wiped out. Pandemics continued sporadically throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, with the pandemic of 1830–1833 being particularly widespread; it infected approximately a quarter of the people exposed.^[16]

The most famous and lethal outbreak was the so-called Spanish flu pandemic (type A influenza, H1N1 subtype), which lasted from 1918 to 1919. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people^[17] while current estimates say 50 million to 100 million people worldwide were killed.^[18] This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed as many people as the Black Death.^[16] This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.^[17] Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred."^[18] The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.^[13]

The Spanish flu pandemic was truly global, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. The unusually severe disease killed between 2 and 20% of those infected, as opposed to the more usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.^[13][18] Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old.^[19] This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70). The total mortality of the 1918–1919 pandemic is not known, but it is estimated that 2.5% to 5% of the world's population was killed. As many as 25 million may have been killed in the first 25 weeks; in contrast, HIV/AIDS has killed 25 million in its first 25 years.^[18]