The 2016 Cold and Flu Thread

[cindybubbles]

This is the place where you can post stories about cold and flu season here.

My story starts on Sunday, with a sore throat. I gargled with salt water and in three days, the sore throat was replaced with bouts of hacking and coughing. I'm currently battling this phase with more salt water, cough syrup, as much rest as I can, Tylenol (for my pre-monthly-ow headaches) and lozenges. Of course, I brush my teeth after sucking on my last lozenge for the day and before going to bed.

What about you?

[Aria]

I've contracted Fifth Disease from my nephew. No sore throat at all, just intense nausea, muscle pains and fever. Effects are lingering. Good times...

[Ree]

Woke up the day after my birthday with a sore scratchy throat and it has been developing all day into something more.
Happy freakin birthday to me.

[Pixelated]

I got the flu shot at least a week ago and my arm still hurts.

[ParkingWitch]

Got my shot the 17th, just one night of vaccination reaction. Took a dose of Tylenol and slept it off.

[TheSHAD0W]

I never get flu shots, they're simply not effective enough and the effectiveness is going down as the strains that aren't chosen for immunization are the ones that wind up spreading.

I picked up my cold a bit more than a week ago and it's still dogging me.

[bainsidhe]

I have seasonal allergies, and it's that time of year where my sinuses keep switching between feeling fine, aching, or running like crazy. And something I learned this week, is that allergies can lead to an ear infection. So I'm currently on antibiotics dealing with my very first ear infection and all the pain and suck that comes with it. As an added bonus, the doctor cleaned out my ears for the first time, which was an extra special and painful experience. What joy.

[Aragarthiel]

Little Ara has had an adventurous week. We took her into the doctor on Monday to have a swollen toe looked at to make sure it wasn't broken (it wasn't), and while we were sitting in the waiting room, we noticed she was really warm. Within ten minutes of getting into a room she had thrown up all over me and we had determined her temperature was 102. Two hours later, after x-rays and being thrown up on twice more, we left with a prescription for an anti-nausea med that wasn't available anymore. Cue an hour of going back and forth between the doctor's office and the pharmacy (and remember, I just spent two hours sitting in vomit-covered clothes and we're an hour from home so I haven't changed yet), we get some ibuprofen and the anti-nausea meds into her. She threw up one more time, and her fever cleared up over the next few days.

BUT! That's not where it ends. At the doctor's office we noticed she was developing a rash that we had attributed to such a high fever. Well, that rash continued to get worse even as her fever dropped and she began generally feeling better. Yesterday, my grandmother had to watch her while Hubs and I were at school/work, and noticed that less than 20 minutes after giving her a dose of ibuprofen, she had a rash so bad that her right eye was nearly swollen shut. An antihistamine later and it was much better, but now we know that she's allergic to ibuprofen. They had given her a dose at the doctor's office and every time we gave her another, the rash got worse, and my grandmother was the first to notice the connection.

And today, despite being fever-, rash-, and nausea-free, she has a cold. That Hubs and I seem to have caught. Colds drain me of all energy so after a week of caring for a severely sick toddler, I'm even more exhausted.

I am totally done with this constantly-being-sick thing.

[cindybubbles]

It's been more than two weeks since my sore throat started. I'm feeling much better, but I still get the occasional cough. It's like there's something there that wants to get out, but is doing it very slowly.

[Shalom]

So pissed off right now.

Tried to fill Tamiflu for a Fideliscare NY patient today. Script rejects "GENERIC SUBST REQ FOR PAYMENT".

I call Caremark, they tell me I have to dispense Alvogen's generic.

What freaking generic. The patent expires 2/23/2017. Apparently there was a news article stating that they'd reached a settlement with Alvogen allowing them to go into production earlier, and some moron at Fidelis jumped the gun and disallowed the brand as of today. I've tried three wholesalers, not one of them even lists any generic oseltamivir availability as of now. I challenged them to provide me an NDC. "We can't provide you with one." Of course not, because there isn't any yet. Fscking morons what they are. They suggested that I either call the plan and try to arrange for a one time override, or have the patient pay cash. Right, a Medicaid patient can reach into his damn pocket and pull out $150+ for a drug that isn't even worth taking in the first place.

Edit: As I type this, I get a fax from Anda telling me I can pre-book the generic for delivery next monday. Thanks a whole damn lot, guys.

Edit: So we called the doctor and had them switch it for the suspension, which is still patented. At the adult dose he's going to need 125 ml, which at 60ml/bottle means I have to bill three bottles, which is gonna cost them way more than 10 capsules. Suck it Fidelis.

[AccountingDrone]

Beginning of November I hit Connecticut for a combination doctors appointment and booty call with the husband [temporarily geographic bacheloring and living in Western NY.] He had strep throat, which he got tested for and a provisional scrip, and the doc knows I am prone to picking up strep if I even look it up online [or so it seems, I am just really prone to getting it when I am exposed] so he wrote a scrip for me just in case because he know if Rob was positive I would get it from him [can you tell we have done this multiple years?*sigh*] so I get home, and get the first tingle of a sore throat, my roomie checks and yup, white placques and all. Fill the scrip, take the scrip and wait it out. At least I had a full 5 gallon batch of homemade Jewish Penicillin and a couple gallons of juk in the freezer ...

<Juk, also known as rice porrige or congee: Take a black chicken, put it in a pasta penta with a whole onion cut in quarters, a peeled piece of ginger the size of a ping pong ball, a large bulb of garlic peeled and cloves left whole, a star anise and the contents of a black cardamom pod, the anise and cardamon seeds wrapped in a piece of kitchen gauze. Add just enough cold water to cover, cover and set on the burner. Turn on high and bring to a boil and turn off. Let sit for 1.5 hours. Lift the insert out throwing away the used up veggies and seasonings set the chicken aside to pull the meat off from. Measure the resulting chicken stock, and add raw washed rice [hm, you want half the amount of rice for that amount of liquid as you want it to be watery and not cooked rice] and in addition to the rice, add one or two onions chopped, another bulb of garlic, smashed, another peeled and chopped ball of ginger and the meat off the chicken chopped. Let simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Jewish Penicillin - a moderately standard chicken noodle soup, though I like largish pieces of carrot, onion and celery as well as the chicken chunks and wide egg noodles. I wait to add the noodles til the end so they don't turn into mush. Sometimes I substitute wild rice for the noodles.]

[wolfie]

Saw one of the ingredients in the recipe, and had to comment. A few years back, when there were fears of a flu pandemic and Tamiflu was in short supply, one reason given was that there was a shortage of the source of one of the key ingredients - star anise.

[AccountingDrone]

Saw one of the ingredients in the recipe, and had to comment. A few years back, when there were fears of a flu pandemic and Tamiflu was in short supply, one reason given was that there was a shortage of the source of one of the key ingredients - star anise.

The congee/juk? It is actually a traditional Chinese medicine soup - the ginger, garlic, star anise and black chicken [silkie bantams] are actually like 3000 years old recipe for medicine specific It is actually moderately 'hypoallergenic' for food sensitivities [rice is considered pretty neutral allergy-wise for humans and dogs] though I have seen it made with buckwheat kasha or barley instead of rice. *purportedly* [so I don't get gigged for pretending to be a doctor or something] ginger is a specific for nausea [which can be a result of a cold, from swallowing the mucus] garlic and anise are supposedly good against both bacteria and virus critters, and the black chicken is supposed to be excellent for the lungs, blood and strengthening the qi to fight illness.

If you are really interested in the idea of Chinese food as medicine, I suggest Buell's Soup for the Qan ... I really like Bal-Po Stew [lamb or mutton, daikon radish, black cardamon. Very tasty, almost curry like heat-wise.] I know Charles Perry and Paul Buell and respect their scholarship =)

[Aria]

Ancient remedies can be amazing and are often a starting point for new antibiotics. A lot of antibiotics started out with, well, the bark on this tree...

I read recently where some researchers decided to investigate European ancient doctoring and found a recipe for the 'greatest of leechings'. It involved garlic, leeks, ox bile and a bunch of other things cooked up in a copper kettle for eight days, I think it was. It immediately caught their attention because everything on the list was known for having mild anti-microbial properties. What happens when you stew them together for eight days in a copper (also anti-microbial) pot?

The magic happens. They followed the recipe as closely as they could then sent it to a lab to be tried out. It killed everything up to and including multi-drug resistant MRSA. Pretty cool! And now they have to figure out how it does that lol...

[morgana]

Aria, can I get a link? PLEASE?

Day five of this go-round of the sinus infection that has recurred 2 - 5 times a year for the last 12 years. Second day of antibiotics, with steroids this time, every over the counter decongestant in the world, and I'm afraid if I go to bed I'll drown in my sleep . . .

Ever coughed so hard your chest just burned? My back is doing that.

I'll try anything . . .

Never mind, found it. Thinking of brewing up a batch.