Influenza Gentlemanius

By | 21 October, 2010
Artistic rendition of Influenza Gentlemanius

Artistic rendition of Influenza Gentlemanius

For the last week or so I’ve been suffering from the worst affliction known to man. Worse than diabetes (that’s just a failed pancreas), worse than chicken pox (that’s just itchy spots everywhere), worse indeed than the Ebola virus (that’s just your innards liquefying into a horrific bloody sludge). Yes, I’m talking about Man Flu or to give it its full Latin name Influenza Gentlemanius.

It all started last weekend with a sudden and mysterious rise in blood glucose. Usually after a meal my BG is back down to sensible levels within about two hours. However, after two hours I was still in the high teens and injecting correcting insulin like it was going out of fashion. Oddly enough I didn’t actually feel too bad – just the usual tiredness that comes with running with high readings for a day or two.

However, Monday wasn’t so good. Crushing tiredness, achiness and general malaise and still the ceiling high blood glucose readings. So, for the first time in two years, I left the office and returned home to bed where I slept for the best part of the next two days – only waking to check my BG every two hours or so. God bless those sick day rules.

I suppose that’s the double whammy of diabetes, not only do we get stricken down with Man Flu but we also get stupidly high blood glucose readings too – which only add insult to illness injury. I tell you, it’s a complete pain in the bum.

Anyway, by Tuesday evening I knew I was well on the road to recovery as I was starting to get completely bored with hanging round the house. In my experience, being utterly uninterested in anything that’s going on around you is strongly indicative of genuine illness. Conversely, being bored means you are no longer at death’s door.

So I’m now back at work, fit and healthy again. I’m just annoyed that I’ve now lost my position at work as being the person with the best off-work illness record. It always gave me a degree of satisfaction that the person with the chronic illness had been off ill the least amount of time out of all employees. But ho hum – here’s to building up my record again over the next few years!

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About Tim

Diagnosed with Type One when he was 28, Tim founded Shoot Up in 2009. For the diabetes geeks, he wears a Medtronic 640G insulin pump filled with Humalog and uses Abbott's Libre flash glucose monitor.

2 thoughts on “Influenza Gentlemanius

  1. Rohan

    It sucks to blow your good sickness rate record! Mine has always been good too, I’ll go to work with anything short of full blown flu (which I’ve never had!), usually. Indeed, I’m yet to be really ill since diagnosis, so haven’t experienced the dreaded highs that accompany it :S

    Glad you’re feeling better now, at least πŸ™‚

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  2. Annette A

    Yes, it amuses me that I’ve had fewer days off than anyone else in my department-I put it down to having to pay more attention to my health than your ‘average healthy dude’ and knowing in advance when I’m going to be ill so I can take precautionary measures (that, and being genetically immune to man-flu πŸ™‚ )

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