CON PLAGUE!

proXimity

PAX has come and gone, though I'm sure some of it's effects still remain with you. That's right, that pervasive air of sickness that afflicts so many. It should come as no surprise after being in a building with so many people, sharing controllers, air, and in many cases, food.
SO!
Share your sob stories about being sick!

Myself, I came away rather lightly with at wost a slight sinus cold, which was not helped at all by the extremely dry air in the WSCTC.

BlackDragon480

I came away from this PAX feeling just fine, outside of a couple of blisters on my feet and general muscle fatigue from being on my feet 10+ hours a day.

I credit the prodigious ammounts of alcohol I consumed throughout the weekend. The CONSARS never stood a chance.

Beryllium

I wrote this up yesterday afternoon, just before the forums crashed:

Home is in Seattle, and Saturday night I almost faintet at the Freezepop concert. Wedge, awesome enforcer is awesome, helped me home. I dismissed the wave of pain and lightheadedness as part of my chronic pain condition, because everything hurt.


Fast Forward to this morning: I was running a slight fever (now considerably higher), body aches, chills, coughing, and lungs full of crud making breathing a challenge, and doping myself up on NyQuil. (Needless to say, I stayed home on sunday.)


Deeply sorry to House Hufflepuff, the bar crawl may have been Ground Zero.

Since then I've been to the ER (couldn't breathe, extreme dizzyness, wracked with pain), and am waiting for the results of a throat swab so we know what flu strain we're dealing with.

Toeman

OH NOEZ ITZ TEH H1N1!!!!!!!1!

I didnt catch anything. I used lots of blizcon hand sanitizer.

Only downside is my bleeding chafe. Yeah its horrible

proXimity

Sorry to hear that, Beryllium...

Here's hoping that PAX09 won't be a huge outbreak of swine flu >.>

Beryllium

I used so much hand sanitizer that my hands smelled like a hospital room.

Unfortunately, I had too much tipple at the bar crawl and was in "kissy-drunk" mode for much of the evening. Those poor souls who got more than a peck on the cheek are probably screwed.

Queen Brewer

Did anyone else hate the weird blueberry smell of the Blizzcon hand sanitizer? Blech.

I was only sickish on Saturday evening. No H1N1 for me!

Mages

Apparently 2000 WSU students came down with the piggy flu. Dunno if it could've come to PAX but it's within realms of reason. We need the Pope of Geekness to bless us and get rid of our sickness. DO IT WIL WHEATON!

joel158

By the end of Sunday I felt terrible, and spent the rest of the afternoon laying on one of the sumo's in the handheld lounge, waiting for my friend to leave as he had driven. A nice bowl of pho, some tylenol, and about a gallon of juice later, my fever is gone and I feel much better, but still have a bit of a cough and my muscles are still sore/tired.

ashridah

Personally, i'm astounded that i'm not sick yet. I thought i was getting sick before pax, but at worst, i've had a sore throat since tuesday-ish. Nomad's not feeling great though, hasn't been for the past 24 hours.

RoyceSraphim

Ours is the immune system that will pierce the cell walls and nucleus!

Yeah, I woke up with my throat a little tight and my feet sore. It didn't help that each night I had to walk up hill to my house. But thankfully I dodged the shootout at a local bar when I finally got back to Renton, you would be surprised how fast you can run with a green bag full of swag when 30+ gunshots are 50 feet away from you.

ravemonger

I felt a little something on Sunday but figured it was the weather. Come Monday afternoon and I wake up from my nap feeling like a truck hit me. Hopefully it is the piggy flu so I can get my antibodies now. I was overdosing on Vit-C and hand sanitizer all weekend so hopefully my body will fight this off pretty quick.

Vander

I was feeling great until Sunday afternoon. By the time I landed back in LA at 9pm I was a wreck. The whole night I've had chills and cough. Throat isn't too sore but I do get dizzy.

I blamed the rain at first but now it's positive we had an infected amongst us.

Sayoko

It started off as a sore throat Sunday afternoon. I figured it was because of the lack of sleep, among other things like weird eating schedule, sudden change of weather (sun and rain), etc. Then I started to feel groggy and headachey in the evening. The sore throat became phlegm-filled late evening and when I finally got home after the 3 hour drive back to Vancouver, I noticed I had a fever. Woke up today with all of that fun stuff plus a stuffy nose.

...and I have a proposal to write for my first day back to school tomorrow. Damn this nerd flu.

tthayer

I too have the plague. Pulsing fever and racking cough, oh my!

BichnKitten

No fever, but I do have a sore throat and body aches. Mine started Sunday. Fun Fun!

AGODWithAGun

Hurrah, Hurrah to all those who are now of the infected.

I went camping directly after pax on saturday so I had no access to the internetz, all I knew was that I felt like "a truck hit me" <- well said there. Terrible cough, phlem, headache, stuffy nose, all the best things!

Come back to find you all have it too, outstanding times, thanks to the one who passed it, power to those who have it. I'm not too down, got a day off from work out of it!

Suffer well brothers and sisters!

nusu

I also have the plague

102 fever when I checked 30 mins ago, feeling weak/tired since yesterday...

Fellina

I too have joined the infected. I think it may have something to do with the dude near me at the concert who smelled like he'd been dead for a week. Or maybe the guy who picked his nose and then grabbed the door handle in front of me. Anyone who unabashedly picks their nose in public probably doesn't cover their cough either.

Power to the infected!

datadamage

I've made it through with merely a sinus cold, so far. Here's hoping...

Trisha Lynn

I just got back from a trip to the lovely Virginia Mason E.R., where I learned that my headache, sniffles and fever were indeed the flu. They pumped me full of I.V. fluid and their only recommendation for me for the rest of the week is that I can't fly back to NYC until my fever goes down. Yeah, right... I have to go to work on Wednesday.

Beryllium

ravemonger wrote: »

Hopefully it is the piggy flu so I can get my antibodies now.

Wait just a minute, buddy. There's worse flus going around that are completely unrelated to piggy flu, and the piggy flu is only killing people who Darwin is already trying to weed out of the gene pool anyway (read: underlying health problems).

The regular winter flus this year are turning into pneumonia. Go get your standard winter flu shots. I don't want you to get hit by one of the other strains later.


(Slightly useful fact: the only reason the CDC is panicking is because swine flu's shell has proteins that our bodies have never seen before, so your white blood cells are saying "laa-dee-dah... who are you? You're not on my watchlist. You seem legit. Have a nice evening, no cover charge for a pretty little pathogen like you".)

Mimming

I too have just developed flu like symptoms. Still in Seattle too. Hopefully it's not h1n1 or I'll be stuck here for days.

Beryllium

Trisha Lynn wrote: »

I just got back from a trip to the lovely Virginia Mason E.R.

Virginia Mason ER = Good. Harborview Medical ER = Bad.

Harborview lives in the ghetto where all the gang shooting victims, king county jail inmates, huge immigrant families with six screaming kids, oxycontin junkies, waiting room homeless looking for naps and "It's probably heartburn, but I'm bored, crave attention, and there's a slight chance it's a heart attack, so I called an ambulance and if you don't get me a bed immediately I will sue you!" asshats go.

In all likelihood, it is where the zombie apocalypse will start.

trickycoolj

I've had a headache, dry throat and slight cough today, but I attributed that mostly to PAX hangover. Checked my temp after hearing about the H1N1 explosion at WSU but I have a normal temp. I did sleep over 14 hours last night so I'm just hoping everything is hunky-dory when I wake up for work in the morning.

I figure it's inevitable after all the controller/mouse/keyboard sharing going on in the expo halls and free play areas that we're all going to catch a little something.

Get well soon PAXers!

xKappax

Being the younger sister of a previous post by AGODWithAGun, I too have suffered from this wonderful plague most of us have encountered. It has never quite happened to me for the 4 years of attending previous PAX events. Nor did i ever recall seeing sick individuals.

I have what i thought started as a sinus infection a week n a half ago, but my body fought it off. Then come Saturday night/Sunday morning i noticed intense headaches, coughing, phlem, sore throat, runny nose, and continuous body aches.

Not quite sure what the turn-out will be for this certain cold, but hopefully not strep throat... which unfortunately is what i believe will be the outcome.

Good luck to all my other PAX members.
Hope you all turn out better soon.

Passerbye

It's so horrible.

My skin is sensitive to every light touch - even wearing a t-shirt hurts. My joints and bones ache. My spine aches. When I lean close to the monitor the heat coming off of it feels like a hot pan on the stove. I have a fever and a runny, stuffed up nose. My sinuses hurt. I can barely walk normally, I'm reduced to hobbling. I had a sore throat earlier too. At least I don't feel nauseous.

Drakul

Me and a friend both got it. Temps in the 102 range, Aching all over, pounding headaches and constant coughing. Its pretty horrid

Shaddz

Yeah, I got the PAX Pox, too.

At the time of writing this, I have now slept approximately 20 hours straight (A personal best).

Threepio

Glad to see the symptoms are consistent. I feel like death warmed over: pain in my joints, some fabulous coughing, and a lack of desire to eat anything.

Sumi

Yesterday there was something wrong with my brain. I was standing still but it totally felt like the ground was moving underneath my feet... Like an earthquake. Later that day I could be found laying on the concrete floor in the queue room, shivering. Lack of food, water, and sleep will do that to you. Not to mention the alcoholism.

[Edit] And no, I was not on drugs during this experience.

Divebommah

@IntelGameOn here. I was walking around handing buttons and prize cards out sometimes to a dozen people at a time, shaking hands, using controllers and waiting in lines. By end of day Sunday I was coughing up a storm, but today was the real kicker: Massive fever, wracking cough, aches and pain.

I WOULD DO IT ALL AGAIN THE SAME WAY!

RoyceSraphim

After cleaning up after so many filthy mofo's at work, Pax has nothing on my immune system.

Mystral721

Crossing my fingers that this scratchy throat is from talking too loudly for hours at the Twitter Shitter tweet-up on Sunday night and not teh ConSARS.

Edit at 4 AM: Yep, I've got it, too. Awake because of the cough and not being able to breathe.

Threepio

Divebommah wrote: »

@IntelGameOn here. I was walking around handing buttons and prize cards out sometimes to a dozen people at a time, shaking hands, using controllers and waiting in lines. By end of day Sunday I was coughing up a storm, but today was the real kicker: Massive fever, wracking cough, aches and pain.

I WOULD DO IT ALL AGAIN THE SAME WAY!

You guys were real troopers with the prizes. Sorry to hear you acquired the pox.

Try popsicles, they're helping us.

Doc Holliday

ConSARS here. Terrible cough, low energy. Might have to sleep through work tomorrow.

superprice

The boyfriend started feeling kinda bad by Saturday night, then progressively got worse all day Sunday and passed out as soon as we got home. Spent the entire day in bed today and I finally got it: fatigue, sore throat, coughing, fever, stuffy nose. I just hope a day of rest cures it as I need to be back to School ASAP.

Asiina

I, too, have the ConSARS. It seems pretty mild. Stuffy nose yesterday, scratchy throat and cough. I can feel it moving into a chest cough though. I'll probably be fine in 2-3 days at the most.

It's my shoulders that are the worst though. I'm probably going to need a massage after all this.

But really it was absolutely worth it. A small price to pay for an amazing weekend.

TheConstantWay

Am I the only one who is imagining "PAX 2009 INFECTED" buttons for next year?

Zionad

for some reason i was nauseated all sunday... seems to happen the morning after I drink a bunch of alcohol... weird coincidence

redhalo

As many have noticed, I was started losing my voice towards the end. Upon flying home, I can barely speak at all and am very achy in my bones and throat.