Heat and Flu Nightmare!

What a week I have had! It started with excitement about the possibility of getting to see the first London xFactor auditions from an audience perspective down in East London. Followed by my school leavers prom and an awful flu virus. I will elaborate below:

Monday

The day of the queue - It is morning and I am getting read to meet a friend in London as we attempt to get in to see London's fist xFactor auditions. I am to meet a girl at Bank Station as a midway point in the journey. I head to my local station and and find my way to Bank and I meet the girl there. We head on the DLR to Custom House Station, where the auditions are being held (in the Excel Centre). We get there and find a huge queue of screaming fans and we had to the back of the queue. The organisers came around checking tickets - he gets to us and we realise that the girl's dad only printed the email confirmation and not the exact tickets. We are argue with the guy for a while and he runs off with the email and forgets us after some time. We queue for 3 hours 10 mins, slowly moving forward in the never-ending queue. We finally get to about a 50 person distance to the door and we are told they have filled up. We find out that over 450 people including us didn't get in because the organisers didn't count the seats properly before offering the tickets online.

After some welcome anger and frustration, we go off to the other side of London to Westfield Shopping Centre. We head off for a late lunch at Wagamama at 4:30pm. We head into the main shopping centre after a while as the girl needed to enquire some information at the Apple Store. She gets a call saying she needs to "dog-sit" and has to leave. I decide to stay and have a look around at my first experience of Westfield. To be honest, I found it nothing special - in fact, after walking around an hour, I left ending up buying one single t-shirt. What a day!

Tuesday

The day of the prom - a usual day at home, sitting in front of the TV, listening to music etc. Afternoon comes and I get ready for prom tonight. I decide to wear a shirt, and some cream coloured trousers and a straight jacket. I leave for my local tube station on my way to The Gallery - a nightclub/bar in Hendon. As I get off my lonely carriage at Hendon, I see lots of friends from school getting out a carriage further down in the train. We all head off the club. We all have a nice time and finish at 1:30am. There is a long debate on how to get home, but eventually a plan was derived.

Wednesday

The day of the sleep - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Basically, I sleep most of today and watch TV and the normal stuff. Nothing interesting happens.

Thursday

The day of the early symptoms - this is where my dreaded flu arrives. I start coughing in the morning, starting fairly infrequent but later on in the day, it is very frequent and annoying. A feel a little tired and feel sore throat coming along - probably due to the coughing itself. Apart from that, things remain the same - TV, music and the rest.

Friday

The day of AHHHHH (Part 1) - Oh this is not a good day. I get a Temperature of 39.5c, I'm coughing frequently, sneezing, soar throat, dizzy, exhausted and the dreaded chills vs sweating. Yes, I get the good old goosebumps at the same time as I sweat away - Oh dear, he has the flu. Lying on the sofa all day, complaining of the heat - from inside and the outside temperature. I am in isolation from the rest of the family - and by night I feel awful. I end up sleeping 3 hours and getting up at 5am because I can't stand to stay in bed because I am getting very strange and annoying Financial dreams that make no sense.

Saturday

The day of AHHHHH (Part 2) - The worst of all the days. I collapse on the sofa downstairs in front of the TV watching the continued news of MJ's death - I must have clocked hundreds of hours of the MJ news by now but oh no it continues to dominate the news and my life. I eat practically nothing during the day and sleep on and off and the dreaded chills and sweating continues along with a high temperature. It is 4pm and I check my rainfall radar online as I know storms were likely to develop - I spot some nice colours develop very fast on the radar and shortly after, we are hit by a severe thunderstorm. Thunder and lightning frequently making an appearance and torrential rain and hail. I suddenly get a small boost of energy for a few minutes to get up and record a few videos. I managed to capture one bolt of lightning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQtfRSwuL5E

The storm lasts 4 hours - which was the longest storm I had been in before. I collapse on the sofa and the symptoms are as bad as they can get. An hour later - it is dinner time. I had barely eaten all day so I don't know why my mum brought in a plate of food but I ended up not being able to use my arms to cut anything. I literally had no energy to eat. However, 2 hours later, I managed a bit of toast. I go to sleep later on in the night and manage to sleep better in the night but still get up at 7am.

Sunday

The day of the recovery - I still have a temperature at this point although slightly lower than it had been. I continue to cough and sneeze and I am still exhausted. I continue to lie in front of the TV on the sofa downstairs watching yet more MJ death news. By lunchtime, I start to feel a little better - less shivery. I take my temperature and it is almost normal. I am able to eat a little bit of lunch, but still very little. I have energy to move about a bit but I still must remain in isolation.

Over the next few days, I recover further and as I am typing, I am almost feeling normal. I spoke to a GP and they couldn't confirm over the phone if it was Swine Flu or a different flu but it seems highly likely that it was the H1N1 flu strain. I heard news from people at school of several cases and a story that suggests that some people spread it at our prom after being in-contact with someone a few nights before it. This is all unconfirmed but what is confirmed is that some people did get Swine Flu in my year at school so the likelihood that I caught it from them seems reasonably high.

So that was my week - it was full of a few highs but mainly lows. Whatever flu thing I had, it was one the of the worst things I've had and hope I don't get it any time soon.