{"id":34516,"date":"2020-09-29T17:08:05","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T16:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=34516"},"modified":"2020-09-29T17:08:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T16:08:09","slug":"man-flu-lurgyitis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2020\/09\/man-flu-lurgyitis\/","title":{"rendered":"Man-Flu Lurgyitis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well, it had to happen – Man Flu! After months of shielding, isolation and generally being careful, Morgan had to go back to school. Sure enough, within a week he had a bit of a cold so had a day off sick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason, despite being generally fit and healthy I always seem susceptible to such infections, So, true to form within a day or two I also had a cold. Being a manly kind of person this escalated into full blown man-flu. The really sore throat and headache soon became snotty and I had all over body aches. We checked my temperature as I felt pretty hot and shivery all at the same time but it seemed OK. Morgan had recovered but I was feeling pretty bad. To make matters worse, as is usually the case when I get a cold, my pericarditis flared up as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loss of Fitness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First thing to suffer was of course my \u2018recreational\u2019 activities. I was still able to work, but I missed a couple of nice windsurf sessions and I stopped all swimming, biking, kayaking and running. Things had been going quite well with my \u2018training\u2019 until this point. I hadn\u2019t really been training as such. Instead I’d been following more of a \u2018get out there and enjoy it\u2019 kind of plan. Thanks to the Coronavirus lockdown there were no races planned. There was nothing to aim for. Therefore the main emphasis was on doing what felt good on the day and suited the conditions. I had however been fairly consistent throughout the year and the fitness chart on the various training tracking apps had showed this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fitness Levels<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

However, as can be seen on the fitness tracker from Strava above, a week of inactivity soon put pay to that as fitness levels plummeted. The ‘fitness’ level is the dark line, that had been rising fairly steadily and had peaked at around 125 but has now dropped down to 101 and continues to fall. A few days would have been OK and could just have been considered a period of rest and recovery but I\u2019ve been out of sorts for getting on for a week now. I’m not feeling like getting back into any training at the moment either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infections<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There was of course always the niggling thought that it could be Coronavirus. That is after all the thing on everyone\u2019s minds these days. The symptoms were however just those of a normal cold as there wasn\u2019t really a cough or even that much of a temperature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It still made us think though. If I could catch a cold so easily despite the the fact that we hadn’t been anywhere for months and had been really careful, then catching coronavirus would be just as easy. It had clearly come via the school and that\u2019s expected at this time of year. Coughs and colds are always rife a couple of weeks after the summer break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worrying thing is that children generally have very mild symptoms of Coronavirus or are completely asymptomatic. That means that even if they have it they are unlikely to know. They will therefore continue going to school where they will pass it on to their friends. From there it\u2019ll be taken home and will spread into the community. If we can catch a common cold so easily despite staying at home we have no chance of avoiding coronavirus which is even more \u2018invisible\u2019 within school age children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coronavirus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Things took a little turn over the weekend when my sense of taste and smell changed somewhat. I didn\u2019t lose my sense of taste or my sense of smell completely. However, anything that contained vinegar had a really weird smell \/ taste. It was more of a sensation somewhere between my throat and nose than an actual taste or smell so its difficult to describe. But something had definitely changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even this could of course be attributed to just being a little bunged up with a cold. However, on Saturday I started to cough a little and then by Sunday the cough was getting worse. Anna was beginning to have a cold as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPO2<\/sub> Levels<\/h2>\n\n\n\n