Terry Sigmond thought it was a chilly. She even tried to get out of a New Year’s celebration, however her good friend inspired her to go.
So started her weeks-long flu ordeal, when she dozed to Hallmark Channel films and swapped bed-rest images with the identical good friend she rang in 2026 with.
“We have all these pictures together, and we’re smiling,” Sigmond stated. After flu, “we send pictures to each other with tissues stuffed up our noses to catch all the dripping snot.”
“I just laid in bed for days. We have one of those Sleep Number beds that you can crank up the heat on, and I think my husband thought he was in a sauna,” stated Sigmond, 64, who stated she’s normally a wholesome and energetic advertising supervisor for a residence care firm in Florida.
Sigmond and her good friend are removed from alone. A brutal flu season is hitting throughout the nation, sending file ranges of folks to the physician.
According to the newest information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dozens of cities, states or territories within the US present reasonable to very excessive flu exercise, however there are indicators the season is coming down off its winter peak. Overall, the CDC estimates that there have been 19 million sicknesses, 250 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths this season — most of them attributable to a new pressure known as subclade K.
When NCS requested on your flu tales, we obtained a whole lot of written responses from folks like Sigmond and Jillian Luis, a 36-year-old from the Seattle space who stated her household was sick for weeks.
“We just were kind of out of it for a whole month,” she stated between coughs.
It began along with her 3-year-old, then her 6-year-old. Somehow her husband averted it.
“I’m glad somebody’s healthy, but man, it’s annoying,” Luis joked.
Luis is one of many who wrote to NCS who described the pressure of juggling their common obligations with a depressing sickness. The one silver lining, Luis stated, is that her 3-year-old turned so resourceful, she found out learn how to break into the sandwich bread and beef sticks. How does she know? Luis discovered the too-chewy beef bits within the kitchen and items of bread with holes nibbled out of them, “like we had a mouse.”
The subsequent problem, Luis stated, is dialing again all the additional PBS Kids they’ve been watching. “Trying to get back into a routine and limit screen time again, now that will be the battle.”
Many folks stated they might see how conveniences developed in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic made the flu manageable this 12 months. But there are solely so many meals deliveries, off-camera Zoom conferences and TV binges to take benefit of after they’re the sickest they’ve ever felt.
Here’s how they managed to this point throughout this record-breaking flu season.
Lindsay Nelmes says she barely remembers New Year’s — and it wasn’t for enjoyable causes.
The 43-year-old Florida mom of two describes her household as “normally pretty healthy,” however after touring to Chicago for the vacations, all of them — together with her husband and their two middle-schoolers — caught the flu and developed the identical signs: dizziness, chills, horrible fatigue and big-time mind fog.
The household spent a lot of the primary week of 2026 in mattress.
“We just dropped like flies,” she stated.
With everybody being sick, Nelmes says, her children would come into her bed room with their iPads and headphones and ask for drugs about each 4 hours. When they bounced again faster than the adults, there was a two-day stretch through which she thinks she ordered Instacart or DoorDash six instances.
“I’m going to regret looking at my bank statement,” she stated.
The flu wiped Nelmes out.
“My husband and I, it was literally three or four days of just sleeping, not getting up, chugging Gatorade, not eating. It was bad,” Nelmes stated.
Nelmes has regrets. She was so drained, she couldn’t actually comply with her sister’s recommendation to binge-watch “Heated Rivalry.” (The present streams on HBO, which is owned by NCS’s mother or father firm, Warner Bros. Discovery.) Even steamy intercourse scenes between rival hockey gamers couldn’t maintain her consideration.
“I would turn it on and just fall asleep,” she stated, and nonetheless “wake up completely exhausted.”
Dr. Sylvia Baer stated she and her husband acquired flu photographs this 12 months, and they know that in the event that they hadn’t, they’d be within the hospital — or worse.
They’ve been married 43 years and are infrequently aside, so one current morning, she seen a refined change in his voice. He confessed to a cough however “tends to push stuff away,” stated Baer, 75. He left to play golf.
Suspecting that he was sick, she instantly ordered elements to make rooster soup – however earlier than she might even hearth up the range, he got here residence. He stated he felt so unhealthy, he’d left his recreation early.
“Now, this has never happened in the history of the universe,” Baer stated.
Her husband slept for 2 days, “miserable and coughing.” Believing that the vaccine would shield her, she felt she might take care of him with out getting sick. “You know that hope that you cling on?” But quickly, she felt a telling ache in her shoulders.
“We’re both academics, so we like to be in charge of our minds. We have multiple degrees between us, but whoo, this virus is so much smarter than we are,” Baer stated. She had a fever and a cough, she stated, and has by no means felt so drained.
“And there was pain in places I didn’t even know I had,” Baer stated.
The hardest factor for Baer has been needing to sleep a lot. Though they’re retired, the snowbirds divide their time between Florida and New Jersey and should not the categories to lie round. Baer stated they play tennis usually; they’re Davenport Fellows at Yale; she’s the poet laureate of Cape May. She writes performs and poems and each train workshops. When they’re again in New Jersey, they hold a Poet-Tree, a tree coated in brightly coloured poems they consistently resupply so folks can take one proper from the garden.
But sick with the flu, a professor who taught literature for 50 years stated she couldn’t write or learn something.
“If I felt better, I would be sad about it, but I don’t even feel well enough to be sad,” Baer stated. “I have planted my flag deeply into the land of bitter.”
Benjamin Brooker, a 40-year-old father of two who lives within the Richmond, Virginia, space, stated he acquired sick after a household New Year’s weekend keep at a resort in southwestern Virginia.
His 7-year-old had it first, however his signs acquired higher between breakfast and bedtime. The boy and his older brother had been vaccinated in October, however time acquired away from Brooker and his spouse, Lauren, and they didn’t get the flu shot like they normally did – and he paid for it, he stated.
At first, Brooker thought he had meals poisoning and known as off work. He felt effectively sufficient that he ran errands and acquired one son to the orthodontist, however when he acquired again residence, his spouse seen one thing was “still a little off” and reminded him that it was his accountability to get it checked out.
The subsequent day, pressing care confirmed that he had the flu. Brooker stated he thinks his spouse instantly went to get her flu shot and a prescription for the antiviral Tamiflu. She averted getting sick – which he stated is lucky, since she took over all of the household duties, together with caring for his or her two cats and three canine.
“She’s a saint,” Brooker stated.
He took Xofluza, the single-dose antiviral, however was nonetheless “completely bedridden for four days.”
Brooker remoted himself from the household; the few instances they needed to work together, he wore a masks and wiped all the things he touched with Clorox wipes.
“They’d remind me, ‘did you wash your hands? Did you Clorox the doorknob and the light switch?’ ” he stated of his household.
He missed three days of work and solely felt as much as small duties by day 5. It took greater than a half-hour to put in writing two emails.
Brooker, the assistant coach of one son’s hockey group, felt like he’d been getting higher every single day however nonetheless wasn’t 100% by the weekend.
“Normally, I’m pretty animated, but I just wasn’t. By the end of the day, it had just completely taken it out of me.”
Dr. Linda Hyatt, a veterinarian within the Chicago suburbs, stated she coughed so laborious from the flu that she cracked a rib.
“This is not something I had on my pregnancy bingo card,” stated Hyatt, who was sick late in her being pregnant.
The 40-year-old says there have been many issues she and her husband needed to complete earlier than her scheduled Cesarean part, however they have been out of time. “We’re just triaging and doing the things that are the most necessary,” she stated.
Her younger son acquired sick first, however it was gentle, with a “tiny fever and maybe a little bit of a snotty nose.” All of them acquired their flu photographs this 12 months. Hyatt figured it was simply a chilly, however when a fever of 100 stored coming again, he examined optimistic for the flu at a pediatric pressing care. He acquired Tamiflu and appeared higher, and her husband didn’t get sick in any respect. Hyatt, although, turned “totally incapacitated.”
“Being so big and pregnant and coughing so much and being so tired and everything, I really had to rely on my husband to care for our 2-year-old. He’s such an active, active boy,” Hyatt stated.
Overly optimistic, Hyatt thought she’d get higher shortly and says she purchased a ton of meals for a delayed Christmas celebration. But even days after the vacation, she wasn’t as much as it, and after they lastly celebrated later, “I asked to open gifts in my pajamas.”
When she went again to work, she wore a masks, which prompted a number of of her sufferers’ people to inform her about their very own horrible bouts with the flu.
One silver lining: With a lot flu, she stated, it ought to enhance her toddler’s immunity through the remaining of the flu season, which runs through May.
“Hopefully, this means that this baby will have protection,” she stated.
Rebecca Hernandez, a 46-year-old mom of two who works at a lab in Michigan, stated she’s grateful that a current promotion lets her earn a living from home typically. It hasn’t been straightforward working through the flu, however “you just have to keep going.”
She spent a couple days at residence and went again to the lab, however she got here residence exhausted and needed to nap. “It has been rough.”
Her 10-year-old son was well mannered sufficient to attend for her to get up earlier than asking her to make pancakes, she stated.
Hernandez’s husband, who didn’t get sick, took over most of the cooking, or she’s simply instructed her children to seize what they need from the pantry. That labored along with her 15-year-old, however her youthful youngster didn’t at all times eat when it was lunch or dinnertime.
“Suddenly I’d see all these wrappers around the living room and think to myself ‘oh, God, he got into that,’ but I let it go,” she stated.
She’s additionally needed to let go of her children’ strict sleep schedule. She didn’t have the power to maintain up with it.
“My husband’s more of a night owl,” she stated, so he’s managing the kids’s bedtimes for now.
Hernandez says her huge takeaway is to verify she will get a flu shot any further. Her whole household will get vaccinated yearly, however she acquired busy this 12 months and forgot.
“This is a reminder that I have to make time for myself and get the shot.”
When Brad Young got here down with a sore throat, aches and a fever, adopted by abdomen bloating and mind fog, he needed to hold his wits about him: He nonetheless needed to work and solo mother or father a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old over the vacations.
“I’m very blessed with their temperament, because they knew Daddy was not feeling well, and they were able to give me the space I needed,” stated Young, a 37-year-old director at a tech firm in Tucson, Arizona. “It helped that they had free rein of TV and YouTube and Disney+, and they definitely took advantage of that.”
Young stated breaking his “cardinal rule” helped, too.
“I never order meal service deliveries. I always think it’s just a total waste, but now we kind of see the value in meal delivery services,” he stated.
This had been the longest he’s been sick, Young stated. He was glad to work remotely, though it was powerful. After a lengthy stretch with children out of college over the vacations, he was keen to make use of his mind and speak to adults, he stated.
The flu additionally taught some helpful classes. He normally retains busy exercising and engaged on a number of initiatives without delay, however the flu pressured him to decelerate. It’s been a “good exercise in patience and being in the moment.”
Another profit, of types, was his complete lack of an urge for food. He didn’t even need espresso, and “alcohol is the last thing I want to do right now.” It made issues straightforward to stay to dry January and everybody’s favourite New Years decision, losing a few pounds.
“I’m kicking off the New Year strong.”