What is the longest you've been sick?

[Tyler24]

What is the longest illness that you have had? How long did it last?

For me, a 5 day flu.

[Trynasneeze]

A couple weeks ago I had a cold for 2 and a half weeks. I don't remember having one for longer than that before

[Chanel_no5]

Five days??? Wow, that's less than my shortest! I usually have the initial illness for about a week. Then I'm looking at another 1-2 weeks of secondary infections like ear, sinus, or chest infection. Which is one of the biggest reasons I'm a germaphobe and absolutely hate getting sick; it takes forever to kick it. 

The longest however, that's gotta be the bitch cold/flu I got in November of 2019. It first hit me on the morning of November the 18th. About an hour after waking up, there was a very annoying sore spot in my throat, but it went away within twenty minutes or so. However, by lunch I had a dry cough. By late afternoon I was coughing constantly and had a lowgrade fever. Then it was in full swing with all the usual cold/flu symptoms, plus a couple of weird and in some cases scary ones that I honestly find a bit sus in light of later events. I was sick to varying degrees (but consistently) until a few weeks into January, so about eight weeks altogether, and the shortness of breath lingered to some extent well into summer.

 

TL:DR  Five days is shorter than my shortest cold/flu. The longest was about eight weeks + 5 months (for one symptom).
 

[SneezyLaura]

Almost three weeks when we're talking cold/flu. It was like my normal colds, that usually last about a week, but way way waaaay longer. And worse. I seriously don't know what happened, if it was a different virus or my immunesystem was just pretty shoddy, idk.  

It was pretty horrible. I woke up on friday morning with a sore throat and feeling pretty tired. So I called in sick for work and thought, well I just rest and relax the whole weekend and I'll be fine on monday. Right? Yeah... no.
For two days I was just really tired, had a sore throat and a headache. On sunday I started to get sneezy. And on monday I felt really bad. Sneezy, achy, tired. So I called work and was like "I think two more days...". (I still thought, I would be over it in a few days...)

Wednesday comes around and I'm like a sneezy mess. I am completely congested, my nose kept running, I sneeze, like every few minutes - wet, loud triplets. My throat burns like hell and I feel terrible. So finally I go see a doctor (in Germany you need a sick certificate if you're sick for longer than three days) and he's like "You sound pretty bad, stay in bed for a few days and come back next monday if you don't feel better by then". 

Of course I was like "Sure, that's a good idea, I will stay in bed the rest of the week and I will feel much better by then, right???" 

Well... My sneezing only got worse. I don't think I've ever been this congested in my whole life AND sneezy at the same time. I could barely breathe. By the next weekend my nose was cherry red and swollen and rubbed raw from all the blowing I did. I'm still incredibly achy and exhausted, my whole body hurts and I started to get chills. And then came the coughing. I coughed the whole weekend, I barely slept and nxt monday I felt EVEN WORSE. 
Like this was the point where I was like "i have this cold for ten days and not only am I not getting ANY better, I don't think I ever felt worse in my life". So I go back to the doctor and he is like "Holy shit, you sound BAD". 
My voice didn't even sound like my voice anymore. I was so congested and my nose AND chest were just so clogged, I had a really deep, raspy voice. 
I have to admit that was the best part of this whole experience. I am a huge fan of "THE sick voice". You all know what I mean. Usually when I have a cold I sound pretty congested but I have never before or after sounded THAT BAD. 
So no matter how terrible I felt, I kept calling people to talk to them just because everybody was like "OMG, you sound SO sick!" 
Turns out I got a really bad bronchitis on top of my cold. 

So he writes me sick for another week. And during this week I got a fever on top of it. 
My sneezing got a bit better, but I was still incredibly congested and my cough had turned into a bark by then and I got chills and a fever. I also lost my voice completely during this week. So by the end of this week I have been sick for two weeks and I'm as sick as I possible can be. Sneezing, coughing, chills, headaches, fever, voice completely gone. The rest of the week was kind of a blur, because I was actually to sick to even care about losing my voice. 
At the start of week three I go back to the doctor and he gives me a sick note for another week, because I must've looked and sounded pretty horrible still. 
Week three is the week where I finally got better. 
Like by the end of week 3 I got my voice back, the fever broke and the coughing got a lot better. 
When I got back to work after more than 3 weeks, people were still like "You sound terrible, this must have been the flu!" and I was STILL pretty sniffly and congested which lasted another two weeks, but eventually I felt a lot better. All in all it felt like it took me up to 5 weeks to really shake this cold and for three weeks straight it was the worst cold I ever had. 

I still don't think it was the flu - my fever was never that high (mostly between 100 - 102°F) and it only started in week 2. It was like my usual colds, just way worse and way longer. 
During the first two weeks I enjoyed somewhat how terrible I sounded, but at the end of week two I felt too bad to even care. And that's pretty unuasual for me. 

  

[Stormer235]

My illnesses will typically last up to 4-5 days, but the worst have reached up to a 2 week-long cold/flu thing. THAT was pretty miserable.

[bingochamp7]

I had the flu at the beginning of 2020 that lasted 14 days. Unlike a head cold, the flu comes with a fever and coughing and I slept all day every day for 8 days due to a fever. I also barely felt like eating which is not a typical cold symptom for me. Luckily I was still on break, so I was able to sleep it off, but it was the worst flu I ever had. When I was awake, I was stuffed up and runny and I coughed almost constantly. I sneezed a bunch too. 

[Melody]

I was sick for 1 month in early 2020. My social life destroyed my immune system lol. had a really, really, bad cold which turned into laryngitis. 😖

[Joan]

The longest was around two weeks more than a decade ago. I don't know for sure what I had, congestion, a few spikes of fever and at the end a sinus infection if I remember correctly. The usual cold for me from start to finish is about a week or a bit over, with days 2 or 3 being the worst.

I have been unsually healthy though, the past couple of years. I'm a bit worried how horrible will the next time be after this long pause!

[Mems]

I’ve had a couple this year that took close to a month and a half to fully go away! Miserable! I’m hoping not to re-live it anytime soon!

[Kaitlynne]

Oh man I’ve had colds that have lasted months lol

[hot-with-fever]

The longest I’ve been sick was a few years ago. It started with some cold symptoms, sore throat and a bit of a cough. Then came the runny nose - not too many sneezes actually, but the ones I had were reeeeally messy. I ended up with snot on my sleeve and I’m the crook of my elbow multiple times.

Anyway, the sore throat only got worse and worse until I could barely eat. Then it morphed into some ear infection which took forever to lose, which in turn morphed into a sinus infection.

Now for the sinus infection I tried this nasal spray that was supposed to be suuuper effective. One spray in each nostril, maximum once per day. And let me tell you… it did some numbers on me. First time tears were streaming, then some snot came, and then… Sneeze after sneeze after sneeze. 
It was a multi-day course and the effect wasn’t as strong the following days, but that first one… Wowzers!

In all it took nearly three weeks to recover.

[nasus]

Once I caught a cold from a girl I was dating that lasted for little bit more than a week and resulted in an absurdly snotty sinus infection that lasted for 20 days or something. I took me a bit more than a month to get healthy again. I probably used 10 travel packs of tissues and got all of my hankies completely soggy a lot of times. Everything was very gross and messy, I miss that month haha lol.

[AngelRain]

Last month I had a cold that lasted three weeks. Turned into bronchitis at the very end. It sucked because it was mostly coughing and almost no sneezing. But my nose alternated between being too stuffy to breathe and running so much I may as well have kept tissues to my nose constantly. At least two days I used up an entire box of tissues.