I´ve got a mother of a cold going on!! Nine consecutive days now and not really getting better… So not much of Swedish Epic Winter Training going on, just Swedish Epic Winter Sickness Eating Stuff Watching TV Feeling Sorry For Myself…
I´ve been going through a few different phases here, since I haven´t been sick in over a year I was initially in total denial (as in “I can´t believe this is happening”) although not ignorant as I went straight for my medicinecabinet and started pounding various remedies as echinacea, zinc, C-vit etc…
This didn´t help much and I went in to the second stage of acceptance as my throat started hurting real bad and I was sneezing itty-bitty pieces of brain or what not as well as blowing my nose just about a million times (info for those keeping score…) At this point I was sure I had strep-throat so I got some penicillin figuring it sure as hell wouldn´t hurt…
I got better slowly but to my surprise I just bottomed out two days later getting really sick with now also chestcough and new itty-bitty pieces of multicoloured “stuff” from varoius places. I now hit the desperation stage!
And that´s the story so far… No fever, I don´t think I´ve had one since I was in Kindergarten, but just miserable and itching to train but know better than doing so. Although I feel that I´m drifting back to the stage of total denial and suspect that I´ll just go for a run any day now just pretending I´m back to my normal hunky-dory self. I´ll remember to bring my cellphone to call ER just before that cardiac arrest…
So. who´s got any old remedies from grandma? I´ll try just about anything as long as it doesn´t include chickenbroth, cold porridge and old episodes of Melrose Place
Wow, it sounds like I went through the same epic camp as an elite! I should be so proud. My symptoms were almost identical to yours, and my thought process. Clearly I’m a pro waiting to bloom. The fluorescent sputum (indicating bacterial infection) is really something, eh?
If you have access to a sauna that should help your ability to turn over more fluids, thereby keeping those inner waters from getting too stagnant. Of course a Swedish massage seems like a no-brainer!, to help the lymphatic system do it’s thing.
Instead of planning to take time off at specific periods, it seems to me the best thing to do is just train, train, race, train, etc. until you get sick like this, and then you’ve found your natural “time off”. Based on what you mentioned in a past post about only missing about two days last year due to illness, it sounds like this is pretty much how you operate?
"Instead of planning to take time off at specific periods, it seems to me the best thing to do is just train, train, race, train, etc. until you get sick like this, and then you’ve found your natural “time off”. Based on what you mentioned in a past post about only missing about two days last year due to illness, it sounds like this is pretty much how you operate? "
Ummm, not quite… I´ve just come off a nice break during which I had expected to time the yearly cold and believe me, I did my best to get sick during this time to sort of have it out of the way but no way, that damned cold struck as I was heading into training again and prolonging my sedentary time a bit longer.
But I believe it to be somewhat true that it´s easier to get sick when resting and having let your guard down a bit during the off-season.
You are not alone, I first came down with disease on 1-20, I thought I was all better & got in some decent training sessions on tuesday & wednesday & then just got hammered on wed. night. Lying in bed shivering and moaning. I have been dressed in my arctic gear ever since.
What has worked for me is Sinex spray & nyquil.
By the way, are you in Boras right now? Near Hallegatan by chance? My family lives out that way.
Interesting, I went to Hawaii for a week over the new year and that was my planned time off for the past six months, so I didn’t bring my bike. Day 6 of the vacation/time-off I began getting sick, and that stretched my one week off into three. Now I’m susceptible to having the smack layed down on me by a 12 year old girl at tommorrow SoCal Slowtwitch “race”. The lesson learned, for me, taking time off is for the weak!, or soon to be.
I’m going to be unusual and recommend that you go to your doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics. I have gotten a bacterial infection 4 times in the past year. Each time it started out as a cold-like thing, and ended up as a bronchial infection with a horrible cough. It sounds exactly like what you have.
The first three times I went to my doctor, I was given amoxicillin, then Augmentin twice. It started to go away, but came back eventually. (When I got it last April, my wife got it too. She went to a clinic and they gave her a Z-pak. She was better in three days.)
I finally got my doctor to give me a Z-pak (Zithromax) earlier this month and that blew it away in 2 days. I have been fine ever since.
Whatever this thing going around is, it is highly resistant to antibiotics. I think that amoxicillin is in much too wide use, and there are many bugs that have become resistant to it. Get a Z-pak.
“I know that in Sweden medical services are bad and expensive, but have you seen a doctor yet? :-)”
That must have been a joke, right? In Sweden the healthcare and medical services are both excellent and very cheap. For anything beyond the first 40 USD, the public health insurance picks up the tab…
And yes, I saw the doctor and have been on penicillin (Tokacillin) for over a week and it hasn´t helped much. I think it´s a wicked virus…
Sometimes the initial infection is a virus, but, all the sneezing, coughing, etc., blows junk up into your sinuses, eustachean tubes, etc., and a secondary bacterial infection(s) may get a toe-hold in these places. IF that is what has happened, zithromycin may be what could kick these bugs out. I had a cold that turned into bronchitis and pneumonia last spring (I never rested enough, and I was losing body fat to be more like the “pros”…I got lighter, but, not healthier!). Zithromycin brought me back from the dead. I was still very tired for weeks/month afterward, but, I eventually made it back to normal health. A simple cold CAN morph into something very bad, especially if you don’t shake it in a normal amount of time. Hope you get well quickly!
And next time you get on a plane ignore the embarassment and wear a mask. The air gets recycled so many times you get to breathe in any and everything that your fellow passengers exhale (to assist your motivation, there has even been one case of somebody getting TB from a fellow passenger on an intercontinental flight).
Generally if the crud is yellow or green antibiotics are required.
Whatever this thing going around is, it is highly resistant to antibiotics. I think that amoxicillin is in much too wide use, and there are many bugs that have become resistant to it. Get a Z-pak.
And that is exactly how bacterial resistance is started. Right now, MRSA is rampant in hospitals, and VRE is on the way. Only 1 or 2 known antibiotics for them that I see ALL THE TIME. IV Vanco or Zyvox (at 3-5 thousand a treatment). If the simple MRSA (started life as a staph aureus infection) developes resistance to this - you can kiss your ass goodbye. VRE (Vancomycin resistant Staph epi) is another up and comer.
Macrolide antibiotics (erythromycin, zithromycin or catchy “Z-pack” marketing) are showing new restance as well.
Sorry to be the antibiotic “Police”, but this type of practice has serious and dire consequences for others and those who deal with resistant/nasty infections (including limb loss/amputation).
Most primary care/family docs are pretty good and now more educated about patients “asking” for antibiotics for viral infections, but sadly, many are not. I’m only venting - please get/take some antibiotics if prescirbed by your PCP if you need some for whatever reason and get better!
