I don’t think “nihilist” means “doesn’t use medicines if there is no evidence they work.”
It can be hard to tell in an individual case whether the drug helped or not. You can take the drug and the disease goes away, but was the disease going away anyway when you started taking the drug, or did the drug actually help it go away?
There can also be placebo effects.
Seems to me it would be impossible to tell, in an individual case, whether Tamiflu helped. The nature of the flu is that, in most cases, it gets better. Moreover, Tamiflu advocates don’t say that Tamiflu completely prevents the bad things it’s supposed to act on. So you take Tamiflu, and then a couple of days later you get better and you say, “Sure glad I took Tamiflu!” But you have no idea whether Tamiflu did anything. You might have done just as well eating Skittles.
So funny… @HImom, I actually was thinking you were a bit of a nihilist yesterday given your reaction to the bomb alert compared to my other friends in HI. 
I guess maybe we are all nihilists about some things!
What are most of you experiencing with the flu? I think I have a bad cold with sinus gunk, but I wish I could find something to turn off the nose faucet.
This discussion is a reminder that medicine is art as well as science. Yes, we are working toward evidence based medicine. However, when one feels as awful as people do with the flu, those hours of perhaps feeling better and recovering faster after taking Tamiflu are worth a great deal. Personally as I give tamiflu to the hospitalized elderly, I think they seems awfully perky the day after they start a course of the medicine. Maybe it is placebo. Hard to tell. Likewise, with seeing a provider when sick. Many would not go, but there are reasons to show up at a clinic and be checked out if you really are unsure about that cough or whether you are on the upswing.
@jym626 for me, I woke up with a sore throat and was exhausted. I took a nap and by the time I woke up, my fever was a little over 102. Everything hurt and I was still shaking cold under 3 thick blankets.
I’ve mostly kept my fever down with OTC meds and my body feels like I’m in the middle of a bad lupus flare. Everything hurts- muscles, bones joints, I’m exhausted, my chest hurts (I’m only coughing a little), and my sinuses feel like an elephant is sitting on them.
I would bring you chicken soup and read to you if I could (what my kids always want – in their 20s they like to be read Harry Potter when they are sick).
Get better soon, rom.
I’m glad you have the energy to post. The last time I had the flu, for two days I didn’t have enough energy to watch TV. Really. Lying in the window seat with my eyes open, watching TV, was too much effort. When they say one of the flu symptoms is exhaustion, they mean exhaustion.
What about prednisone? D got a small dose pack when she first got Mono and it helped. It’s honestly the only drug I’d consider a wonder drug. But dangerous too.
@romanigypsyeyes - your description is similar to the symptoms that a friend described. Feel better.
Pre-lupus I wouldn’t be able to function feeling like I do now. I couldn’t when I had the flu in high school. But honestly, lupus feels like having the flu constantly. I’ve learned to adapt. I still feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.
I haven’t left the couch today or yesterday. I haven’t been able to read or work. Posting and watching Family Guy and bad UFO shows have been the extent of my energy.
ETA: I also wonder if one of the 75 meds I’m on is helping with the inflammation like prednisone (I’m not on prednisone but one of my meds is designed to help keep inflammation in check… just don’t remember which).
The last time I got bad flu was senior year of college. I lay in bed deciding whether it was worth it to try to sit up and grab the cordless phone from the shelf above my head. If I sat up, I could call my neighbor A to bring me a sick tray with soup from the dining hall. After an hour or so of feeling like sitting up wasn’t worth it, the phone rang. I sat up to answer it…and it was A, calling to ask if I would bring him a sick tray!
“I’m glad you have the energy to post. The last time I had the flu, for two days I didn’t have enough energy to watch TV. Really. Lying in the window seat with my eyes open, watching TV, was too much effort. When they say one of the flu symptoms is exhaustion, they mean exhaustion.”
Same here. To me, the fever, intense body aches, and extreme exhaustion characterize the flu. Several times I have had it and, yes, too tired and painful to even focus on the simplest tv show when in the throes of it. And, much like a dying soldier on the battle field, I wanted my mom even in my 40s. 
Here’s info on fly symptoms including a chart on the right contrasting flu and common cold symptoms.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/consumer/symptoms.htm
Well what do you know. I was joking when I said that one of my meds fights the flu but lo and behold there is actually evidence that abatacept (the biologic I take) is effective in fighting the flu!
http://www.jimmunol.org/content/182/11/6834.full
What a world we live in where the medicine that suppress my immune system might have helped me fight the flu.
When I was sick last year with what I figured might be the flu, I had a bad cold with horrible cough, headache and raging fever. I had the fever on and off for four days. I was supposed to be going to NYC to celebrate my friend’s birthday on day 3 of the flu. At one point, I was feeling better, fever had subsided and I thought I might actually take the train up to meet them on day 4 but then the fever returned with a vengeance the night before. Yeah, right, who was I kidding? I felt so awful I could not watch TV or (gasp) read my book! Just getting out of bed to go to the bathroom required a big pep talk in my head.
I never did have any aches and pains, which I often hear are flu symptoms. My back was a little sore from laying in bed all day, but I didn’t really have body aches. I have no idea if what I had was the flu or not since I never went to the doctor,b/c at the same time, there was apparently a pretty bad respiratory thing going around when I talked to a friend who is a pediatrician. My cough lasted for weeks and several of my friends also had a weird lingering cough all winter. I did not have a sore throat other than a bit of scratchiness from what I assumed was due to breathing with my mouth open due to a stuffy nose.
Shoot I’m too late to edit. Here’s a story covering the above-linked study: Rheumatoid Arthritis Drug Might Fight Swine Flu - ABC News
ETA: I was vaccinated too which hopefully helped lessen the impact.
I think the flu can vary so much from person to person. Even when H1N1 was going around full force, we were unsure if we got it. I took my youngest kid to the pediatrician because of the cough and asked her if it was swine flu and she said that it had all the signs of flu and swine flu was the only flu in the area. But for us it wasn’t anything like what people talked about with the unrelenting body aches. Sure we had sore throat, cough, and fever but it didn’t seem that much different than a regular virus and didn’t last any longer.
Someone sent me an article about how men get hit harder with the flu and that seems to fit with our experience. We are a family of women and we never get too sick, except for H. Things hit him much harder, fevers last longer, and he’s more likely to get secondary infections. It evens out though because we women in the family have more GI issues and wonky autonomic systems which cause problems on a more ongoing basis.
I don’t know that I buy into the assumption that men get hit harder with the flu.
When I had the flu, I had a fever of 104 WITH Tylenol. My body aches were like torture. I had a glimpse into what it must be like to have bone cancer. I have never been sicker in my life. I felt like I could be dying, and I didn’t even care. Flu can be a very very serious illness. I also got secondary pneumonia.
In the absence of a definitive diagnosis of influenza, I’m always skeptical that anyone who says their flu wasn’t all that bad really actually had the flu rather than some other virus. Exception might be someone who was vaccinated against influenza, so their infection is actually milder as a result.
“Even when H1N1 was going around full force, we were unsure if we got it.”
I was working at a law school then. At one point a student came into our student services office and, while working with my boss, casually mentioned that he was out of class that week because he’d been officially diagnosed with H1N1.
My then-boss was the world’s gentlest soul, but he told the kid in no uncertain terms to get out of his office and take his germs home. We can talk about your resume on the phone!