Influenza

When I started to feel feverish Sunday evening, I didn't even consider that I had the flu. I had a flu shot. And even though I had seen the story on the news about all the flu strains that weren't covered in this year's vaccine, I thought, "No, not me."

Wrong. I have the flu. Achy, stopped up, fever, icky, nasty flu. The doctor put a tiny Q-tip thingy up my nose to confirm her diagnoses. The first bad news was that Tamiflu, the new drug that shortens the duration of the flu, has not had all the trials it needs for her to confidently prescribe it to me as a pregnant lady. Thus, I can take Tylenol for my fever and anything DM (Robitussum, Mussenex, etc) for my snot/cough issues, but that's about it.

The second bad news is that I shouldn't plan on returning to work to work this week. This is not good, you see, because I am a teacher. The work we leave the children while we are away is designed to keep them busy. While it is not entirely worthless, I use the time I am out to leave more culturally enriching readings rather than the language focus stuff we typically spend time on. However, when I get back, I usually find a pile of half-done, busy work that is impossible to grade and hard to integrate into where we left off in our other studies. Plus, missing a week for me, means more than 600 papers will be waiting when I return. Yuck.