Flu-like illness or (Herxheimer reaction?) as an intermission from my usual anxiety

My son had a fever with headache last week (Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday - not Friday oddly where he went on to score five goals during soccer). Panic stations for me....NOooooooooo, I can't cope with more illness...my body won't cope....it  will kill me. Frantic handwashing and hand sanitising....no touching nose, mouth or eyes.

Then my friend calls to say she is sick, severe body aches, chills, fever and cough. Oh great. I'll stay away then. But she needed help - she had no tissues or toilet paper and was too weak to get up and out. So I went to the nearby dairy and got her some tissues and lemonade (and raided our toilet paper stash here at home. Brave her house. OMG she looked and sounded terrible....looked like full on flu despite her having had a flu shot. Or maybe a chest infection? Selfishly I didn't want to get too close but I ended up spending about half an hour - trying to be sympathetic and trying not to breath in virus particles. I had rubbed hand sanitiser under my nose and on my hands....more hand sanitiser upon leaving. Spent the next two days freaking that I would get her sickness and as bad.

Well I got sick - and probably more likley from my son.  For the past two or three days, I’ve had a fever, the aches, and a sore throat, snotty head, fatigue. I'm supposed to be having rest cos of this damn nervous breakdown, miscarriage etc etc - but now I'm freaking about the symptoms I'm experiencing in association with this cold.

For just about everyone, having a cold or the flu is a bummer. But for people with anxiety disorders, it can be extremely unpleasant, torturous. If, like me, you’re easily triggered into a panic by physiological changes, then it goes without saying that a fever or the mildly elevated heart rate that often accompanies the fever and aches and pains, dizziness etc can be extremely difficult, frightening to deal with.

I won’t even get into the horrible Catch-22 of cold meds and decongestants. They can easily fix one problem (e.g. congestion) but produce another problem ( jitters or spaciness) that can ramp up anxiety (I'm sticking with plain old panadol and zinc (with B6 etc.), olive leaf extract, manuka honey).

Hmmmmm maybe this is all a 'healing crisis' or the so-called Herxheimer reaction in response to microbial die off......oh yay - that means good health will be on the way in the next few days????!!!!!!