Flaming Nora

If you're sitting there watching the news about swine flu and feeling quite smug that you're a normal, healthy person who won't fall foul of the flu and even if you did, would shrug it off with a day or two in bed, think again. Last summer when swine flu made its first rounds, I was a normal, healthy person who thought I'd never fall foul of the flu and even if I did, would shrug it off with a day or two in bed.  And then I got the flu. I had two and a half weeks off work, most of it spent in bed with a temperature and a fever. When I finally felt well enough to back to work after the course of Tamiflu, I was there for four days before I had to go off on sick leave again for a further two weeks.  Holidays to Spain that we'd looked forward to for months had to be cancelled. When I did return to work, I was useless, tired, spent. Fortunately, we have a very good Occupational Health office where I work and they put me on a phased return over five weeks, which hel...

Despite no flu-like symptoms, the doc's given me Tamiflu and instead of being poolside with a beer in Spain, I'm still off work sick with a bad cold and now, a nasty virus too. This is my first day out of bed in a few days and the fact that I'm up and blogging, emailing and catching up is a sign of recovery, I hope. However, we've had to cancel our two week annual jollies to Spain , which we've had booked for months, to a very special place to celebrate a special anniversary for my lovely man and I. Needless to say, we're both fed up. It's only the second time in my life I've had to cancel a holiday due to not being well. The first time was as a kid when my brothers and I all caught chicken pox at the same time. My parents cancelled our annual fortnight to Gorleston-on-Sea and once we'd recovered, they took us on a last minute booking to Walton-on-the-Naze. I've never been back.