The £20 note test

#19 reason for doing the London Marathon: 1-18 again

#19 fact about M.S: Multiple sclerosis was first recognised as a condition in the middle of the 19th century. Prior to this time, there are reports of a few instances of what may have been MS, although the variety of symptoms, the range of other possible causes and the incompleteness of records make these impossible to confirm

I have had flu.  Believe me, It was flu, not just a very bad cold.

The way to tell the difference is the £20 note test. If a £20 is on the floor…. with a bad cold you have the energy to pick it up….with flu you do not have the strength or any inclination. My £20 test was the birthday cards and presents that remain unopened. Need to make a full recovery to do justice to them.

So if you ever wonder if it is flu and you don’t have a £20 not to hand to check, here are the symptoms

• a sudden fever – a temperature of 38C (100.4F) or above
• a dry, chesty cough
• a headache
• tiredness and weakness
• chills
• aching muscles
• limb or joint pain
• diarrhoea
• abdominal pain
• nausea and vomiting
• a sore throat
• a runny or blocked nose
• sneezing
• loss of appetite
• difficulty sleeping

Over the past, nearly two weeks I have had all of those symptoms at some point, and am still suffering from some of them still.

And what does this all mean for the purposes of running the London marathon on April 26^th? There are many different opinions on this, which I am not going to go into now. However, Not running on that date does not mean that I am not going to run on another date. When my mother was alive we used to make plans to do things all the time. We always knew that they were dependent on how well my mother was on the day. If her MS was bad, it might mean having to make changes to our plans, but it did not mean that we stopped making plans. You may remember that blog post #14 was about the importance of having goals. I still have the goal of running the London Marathon, just may be in a slightly different way.

More importantly and interestingly than information on flu, my fundraising is going BRILLIANTLY. As I became more ill, more money seemed to come pouring in.

I am past the £5000 mark. So, so amazing, check it out here

Update on all the  fundraising events next time..and  I promise I am not going to mention the ‘F’ word again.