My American Flu

Hi there

On my seventh day back from America I dragged myself out of bed to visit the doctor.  Struggling with a runny nose, five days of total laryngitis, innumerable aches and pains, gummy-closed eyes, losing 6kg in four and a half days, and a hacking killer cough ...

"It's going around", said the doctor.

Wait-  what-?  Going around?  I drew myself up tall to my full five feet height, and looked snootily across the desk to the man.

This - my illness - was most definitely not 'going around'.  "It's American flu," I haughtily declared.   "I caught it in America."

'My' flu was so obviously an advanced strain, a strain not included in the NZ 2017 winter flu vaccination programme, of which I had fully partaken of prior to my American visit.
Obviously I truly did have this advanced strain of flu.  I was most probably in the first wave of carriers, if not, in fact, numero uno.   Respect please where respect was due.

After googling symptoms on his computer, the doctor sent me away less $45, with no prescription to make me feel I was, at least, getting my money's worth, but with plastic reassurances that I wasn't in the last throes of some terrible life-threatening illness.  However he did have a lovely bedside-whoops-I-mean-deskside manner.

I'm now in the 10th day of American Flu, my eyelids only clump together now if I close them for over half an hour, and my barking cough is still scaring off every cat in the neighbourhood.  Looking on the bright side, my laryngitis bout is over and I can now talk to my friends about my trip - I know they were so looking forward to hearing me nattering on about that for hours!