What is pissing you off this time?

[Gravdigr]

Mmmmm...Downunda.

I've been there!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Got this is an email from a girl in north Jersey who's an insurance adjuster.

Ya i was out in Allentown working a claim and i started coughing and i couldnt stop! I had to step outside i was coughing so hard i threw up this nasty gack! I couldnt catch my breath! The couple wanted to call an ambulance. I said no just tell me how to get to the closest ER! The guy drove me there and his wife followed us. They gave me a shot of steriods, fluids antibiotics and took a chest xray! They kept me for 5 hours! They finally let me go! I went to my doc the next day!

That flu shit is nasty.

[Carruthers]

I've only had flu a couple of times in my life and I don't want it again.
All my joints hurt like hell, I had no appetite and weight dropped off me alarmingly.

I had a flu jab at the end of October but how effective it is, given the number of different strains there are, I've no idea.
Dad also had the jab but has had 'the sniffles' over the last week or ten days, although nothing worse than that.
Given his advanced age, the automatic worry is that it's the start of something far worse.
I've never been too bothered about flu in previous years but I admit that the possibility of contracting it is causing me some concern.

Domestic circumstances dictate that I don't venture out all that frequently so that limits my exposure to any infection.
However, there's the usual weekly grocery shopping to be done and inevitable routine hospital and GP visits for Dad to be undertaken.
If I get it, it will seriously impair my ability to keep both of us going and should Dad get it the consequences don't bear thinking about.

Google News this morning turned up this:

More than three million people at high risk of flu have not yet been vaccinated despite the biggest wave of “public fear” since swine flu in 2009, health chiefs have said.

A letter sent to every GP practice in England warns they have just two weeks left in which to vaccinate patients against this winter’s virulent outbreak, which has already claimed 85 lives and is threatening to become an epidemic.

It comes amid concerns large numbers of pregnant women and young adults with asthma are in particular danger because of failure to take up the jab.

Daily Telegraph. It's behind a paywall, but you know the drill.