Fever, Flu, Medicine

2005-02-08

Like clockwork I came down with a cold. It's been 4 months since my last one, I generally get one every 3 months.

I'm a little bit disappointed though. A friend of mine told me she used to get sick as often as me but that she started taking supplements and she hasn't been sick in 3 years. I asked her which kind and she said Usana. Usana is about the most shifty company I've ever encountered. I'm sure the Usana fans will give me crap for this but you can't order Usana medicine without becoming a member. Try to find a place you can order and it's nearly impossible. The only way to become a member is to find some other member and ask them to let you join. That's hardly what I would call trustworth behavior.

Anyway, whether they work or not I don't know. I originally bought a competitor to Usana in November called Pharmex. They are just as creepy but I was able to find a place to order without having to become a member a member. Usana not only wants you to become a member but they give you the hard sell to sign up for automatically getting them every month 😞

The biggest issue is both of them are relatively expensive. About $120 for a month's supply. Basically I'd have take them for six months and never get sick during those 6 months for me to believe in them and I'm not sure if I'm willing to spend $700 to find out, especially from such scary and unusualy business practices.

But, in either case I thought, what the heck, if they actually work it's worth it. So, I've been talking them for about 3 months but because of their expense I have only been talking half the dosage. I guess I'll try full dosage and post my results here.

Clearly half dosage didn't work since I'm sick and to be honest I don't really believe full dosage will work. Worse, both the Pharmex and the Usana make me feel sick if I take them without some other find of food. That's rather scary. Vitamins shouldn't make you feel like pucking IMO.

On the good side, today I went to the doctor and he had new toys. One was a flu test. It was very much like a pregnancy test. He took a nasal muscus sample (snot) and then applied it to the test. In 15 minutes it had bright blue lines across the test strip indicating flu. That's much better than all the doctors I've been to before which just said "You probably have the flu". Now I guess I can know they are correct.

On top of that, there is now real flu medicine. It's called Tamiflu. That's awesome. So many times in the past I've gone to the doctor and he's like "Well, you have a virus and there is nothing we can do for you so you'll be better in a week or so...Sorry we can't do more.".

The Tamiflu site claims if you get to your doctor early enough you can basically avoid most flu symptoms because of this medicine and with the test it's easy for the doctor to tell if he should give it to you or not.

I don't know if it's working yet. I just took my first pill about 6 hours ago.

In other news my fever right now is 103.2 which is why I'm up. I thought I'd go online and see if I could find some fever info. It sucks that info is kind of conflicting but the first one I found is this page which had several interesting points

*) Lowering you fever will only prolong your cold so don't do it if you can avoid it.

*) You can take up to 106 supposedly so I guess 103.2 is okay.

*) You don't really have to rest for a fever. You should not exert yourself but otheriwse sleeping will generally not make it go away faster. Of course I feel like crap so I'm sleeping to avoid being conscious.

*) Taking a cold shower is bad for you. A lukewarm shower is okay but a cold one can increase your temperature, especially if you start shivering.

*) Using your hand on someone's forehead will not tell you if you or your kids have a fever. Parents for example got it wrong more often then not including both ways. Thinking their kids had a fever when they didn't and worse, thinking they didn't when they did.

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