#so i still get nervous when i cough in public let alone during 2021 or so

[haintxblue]

also, get your fucking flu shot. i am so exhausted at seeing people who firmly believe that there's no such thing as long-term effects from any virus other than covid and get really cavalier or hand-wavey about the flu. after i had the flu around 2018 (signing out of the hospital against medical advice and refusing oxygen because i was broke, firmly convinced i was probably going to die at home gasping for air or of the fever that put me in the ER), i coughed for six months, was very sick for a year, and still have permanent throat damage (and probably lung damage too). i coughed so much i had to temporarily wear incontinence pads because i lost all my pelvic floor tone and had to do pelvic floor therapy to not piss myself. i couldn't draw a full breath for months after the coughing stopped. i had episodes where eating was difficult because the scar tissue in my throat was choking me. I couldn't yell for over a year. i used to walk five to eight miles a day and even a year and a half after the flu could barely make a mile.

i saw multiple doctors during that time period and every single one of them told me that nothing i was experiencing was unusual after a bad flu and it does, in fact, often take multiple years to recover from an especially bad flu. every single one of them told me this was not the *usual* reaction to a flu, but it wasn't *abnormal* either.

get your flu shot.