I got the flu last Friday.
It was a flu of my own making.
I went into a restaurant on Thursday night, sat down, and was very ill.
What I did next was, after a while, get sicker.
At the end of the night, I started feeling very ill and then the next morning, my family and I went out for a meal.
My sister was having a bad flu too, but she had to go home because she was so sick.
It felt like I was in a hospital in the middle of a pandemic.
After the food and drink was gone, I was feeling pretty awful.
Then, the next day, I had a nasty cough.
That’s when I decided to go to the GP.
The doctor told me to go into my room and lie down on the bed and I couldn’t breathe.
He put me in a tube for a while and I had to get an IV.
But when I went to the hospital, the nurse said I was alright.
She gave me a drip, gave me some antibiotics and I was back at work.
On Friday night, when I came home, my stomach ached a little bit and my back pain was also starting to get a bit.
A few days later, I went in to the same GP again.
They gave me the same drip, antibiotics and a tube.
Again, I said ‘yes’ but it felt like something was wrong.
When I went back to work, I couldn´t go in for a routine checkup.
By Sunday, my back was hurting a little and I started to have some pain in my neck.
So I went into the hospital and they gave me an X-ray.
As you can imagine, I thought that was it.
“I can’t breathe” I couldn´ts breathe, I could feel my lungs were closing in, I felt I was going to pass out.
And then, the first thing I saw on the X-Ray was the flu.
There was a picture of the flu and a picture from the flu shot.
No one asked me any questions, no one cared, and they did nothing about it.
The doctor looked at the flu chart and it was really bad.
This was the first time in my life I have ever had a flu, he said.
We took the flu test and I got a positive.
Within hours, my body was in pain, I fell asleep and I woke up and my whole body was hurting.
Luckily, I got up and went to work.
I got the same flu the next night.
From that point on, I did everything I could to make sure my family didn’t have to go through the same thing.
All the doctors in town said to me: “We know you have the flu, but we can’t give you a shot.
We know this is happening to you.
But we have a plan for you.”
I got a test result.
Now, it was pretty clear, but it wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
Since then, I’ve had a few tests and I have to say, I am in pretty good shape.
Because I have managed to keep the flu off my body, I have not had any side effects from the influenza vaccine.
Before I went on the flu vaccine, I would have had a very bad reaction.
In the past, I wouldn’t have had to put on my masks and go into the office at all.
If I was ever in that situation, I might not have survived the flu season.
Even though I was able to get my health back to normal, it still left a huge impact on my life.
Sometimes, I don’t think about it anymore.
For the past few years, I haven’t had any major problems with the flu but it has been really hard for me to find time to do my normal things.
Once I got home, I made sure I was healthy and that my family could take care of me.
People around me were really worried about me and it made me feel like a burden.
To get the chance to be here today, I just wanted to show everyone that I was OK.
Some people asked if I was really fine, and I said: “Well, I still have a few days left of the influenza season.”
I still have two weeks left of that season.
