Wiinter Ills

Our household has done much better this fall into winter season than last year when we had four cycles of the stomach flu go through the household. Nasty! We've seen very little stomach flu this last year. Yeah! This winter it's been the never ending cold. Runny noses, bad coughs, and hoarse voices are more common than not. 

It's not the flu. I checked out the CDC site for information. A cold and influenza are both respiratory illnesses caused by viruses and they share many similar symptoms, but they differ in two major ways. A runny or stuffy nose is a symptom of a cold much more often than it is a flu symptom. Secondly, cold symptoms usually aren't as severe as flu symptoms and they rarely turn into bronchitis or pneumonia. 

Given this information, I have to conclude that our household is suffering from a very strong cold virus. Everyone has had it at least for a short time. Great-grandma managed to shake it off fastest! (Her asthma medication helped.) A few of us haven't managed to shake it off completely for weeks. Others get better, but then catch it anew. Or relapse? We aren't so ill we need to stay in bed, but we suffer from a ongoing lack of vitality and short tempers.  

I could insert numerous photos of snotty nosed children here, but I am not going to. Yuck!