General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Ena

On about the man flu thing, and apologies if you have heard this story from me before, but when I was young I got colds, bad colds, coughs every year, which I put down to working with the public, in my younger days I worked a lot in shops, and when I was in my 20s I once got three separate bad colds, literally one after the other, and when I caught a cold, I had medicines on standby, because I found that the cold first started in my nose, then the infection spread into my throat, and then down into my lungs where the cold would end its days as a very bad cough, so first of all at the sniffle stage, tickley runny nose, it was just tissues, then as it went into my nasal passages, towards my throat I would lose my sense of taste and smell, which I hated, and I subscribed to the saying that with a cold, you start to get it for three days, then you have it for three days, and then it goes away in three days, so as the cold started to make my sinuses sting, and the next stage would be the sore throat at that point I would start with the Nurses, the medicines being Day Nurse and Night Nurse, or the Beechams and Hot Lemon and or Lemsip, I had them all on standby in the cupboard, and then there was a pill you could take, which would dry up a cold for 12hrs, but I have forgot the name.

The final stage of the cold was the chest infection part, and then it was drowsy Benylin time, which when taken with alcohol, it made a cold worth having, and this went on for years, and through all of these bad colds I would just take the propriety medicines and just carry on working, I just waited for it to go away, which off course it always did, that was until I was 32yrs old, when in the October I caught a bad cold, and it started off as a cold, but after having it a week or so, it didn't go away, it just stopped where it was inside me nose, sinuses, throat and lungs, and after about three weeks, I still had it and it was going worse, and I was feeling very ill, and no longer working, and then I didn't want to get up in a morning, and I realised what I had and I thought 'gee whizz' this is proper flu, the influenza, but it started off as a cold and caught hold of me, so after about a week of stopping in bed and being very ill, this coughing started, and it was coughing like have never coughed before, I had already had a cough for the best part of a month, but this coughing was on a far worse scale, I was coughing all night, and I started having difficulty breathing, so I then decided to visit the doctor for the first time in years, and after thorough examination the doctor informed me that I had a, he said a as in A pneumonia in my left lung, at the top of my lung actually, and he prescribed me some antibiotics, I had several visits to the doctor, I got better but only very slowly, and then I lost me voice, and I did not get it back, I was croaking for about six months, and then my breathing did not feel right, so it was back to the doctors and after some tests, I was informed that I had asthma and I was put on two inhalers, a steroid and a reliever, having to have so many poofs of each a day.

I couldn't speak properly, and I couldn't breathe properly without help from the inhalers for, as I have said, for over six months.

When I went outside and the weather was cold, the cold would irritate my left lung, and a coughing fit would ensue, and I only got properly better after a spell of really warm weather the following August.

So I think that I may just know the difference between Man Floo and Woman Floo, because I once nearly bloody well died from it