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Ultimately, it doesn't matter, now I get the shot. Had the flu a few years ago and thought that I was going to die from it. Would be foolish not to take basic preventative measures.

Before I started getting the flu shot, mostly because it has been now administered free at my last two workplaces, I came down with the flu in 2000 or 2001.

I got up that Monday morning for work. I wasn’t feeling sick per se when I got up but was feeling extremely tired and very “out of sorts”, like I hadn’t slept for days even though I had gone to bed rather early the night before and had slept through the night.

I got to work and someone, a co-worker I think, mentioned that I looked sort of pale and asked me if I was OK. I was feeling sort of chilled, and I put on a cardigan and turned on the portable heater at my desk up on high but still didn’t, couldn’t feel or get warm enough. I also felt very weak, fatigued in a fog and several cups of coffee weren’t helping.

Then I started sneezing, and sneezing uncontrollably. Sneeze after sneeze after sneeze.

The all of a sudden I became nauseous and I ran to the bathroom and threw up several times. My boss told me “Go the Hell Home!” and I did.

By the time I got home, the sore throat started, and by sore, I mean flaming raw, it felt like I had gargled razor blades. I threw up a few more times and even had some diarrhea and then crawled into bed, actually on the living room couch because it was closer to a bathroom and the only land line phone in the house and our only TV (and I didn’t want to keep my husband up all night or pass it to him if I could help it).

Then came the body aches, actually everything ached. My joints hurt and ached as if someone had beaten me, hit every joint in my body with a baseball bat or ballpeen hammer and even my skin and my hair hurt. I know it’s strange to think that one’s hair can hurt but that’s what it felt like.

By the time my husband came home from work I was a hot mess – literally because he took my temperature and it was 103.

Then came the coughing and the chest congestion. I was coughing so hard for the next couple of days that I had to change my PJ bottoms many times because I was peeing myself from coughing so hard and my ribs hurt.

I laid on my couch for the next 5 days, thinking I might die, sometimes hoping I would, I was just that sick. I had very little appetite but tried to eat some a bit of chicken soup now and then but was drinking plenty of fluids, ginger ale and herbal tea. My husband at one point tried to get me to go to the ER but I figured there was probably nothing they could do for me other than what I was doing already, taking Tylenol for the fever, staying hydrated, getting rest, but said I would go if my fever wouldn’t break or I had trouble breathing.

I missed a week of work but talked to my boss every day and he told me just about a third or more of the company’s employees and nearly half of our finance department were now out sick with it too.

At the end of the week, that Sunday was feeling a bit better and my husband convinced me to take a shower and get dressed and go grocery shopping with him.

It was good to get showered and dressed, get out of the house and get some fresh air but I ended up using the shopping cart sort of like a walker, I was still that weak, so much so that it was hard to walk through the grocery store without having the grocery cart to lean on for support.

I went back to work the following Monday but it took another week or two before I was feeling anywhere near normal again.

About three years ago my company ran short of flu shots so I let my part-time payroll assistant who didn’t have insurance, take my spot thinking I’d just go to a CVS to get mine since it was covered 100% by my insurance but never got around to it. And sure enough I came down with the flu that Christmas Eve. It wasn’t the worst case I’ve ever had, not nearly as bad as the one I got previously but still laid me low for several days. My nephew also came down with, got sick the day after our family Christmas Eve party when I started coming down with it.

My nephew is much younger that I, very fit and healthy, a bit of a clean freak, but he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.