If a severe cold makes you think you have the flu, there is no reason to panic. Instead, you find it convenient and beneficial to contact your primary care provider to understand whether you are at risk of developing the flu and immunize yourself against it if you aren’t. Preventive measures against the flu by seeking urgent care near me prove a better option than allowing the cold to aggravate into the flu that might need hospitalization, exposing you to flu viruses floating around in hospitals or emergency rooms.
Even if you develop the flu by ignoring a severe cold, you are not at immediate risk of any danger if you know how to access the essential care needed to put your mind at ease. However, you must ensure you receive treatment for the severe cold without wasting time or allowing a minor problem aggravates into a severe condition.
The Flu and a Cold Are Not Similar
Although similarities exist between the symptoms of the common cold and the flu, they are confusing. They can make you feel you have a severe condition when all you need is attention from a medical professional advising you how to manage the miserable feeling to safeguard yourself.
When you have a cold, you will likely have symptoms such as a stuffy nose and head, a physically cold feeling, headache, sore throat, coughing, sneezing, and an unwell feeling.
If you are on the verge of contracting the flu, you will have all the symptoms mentioned above, with the rapid onset of flu accompanied by fever, fatigue, body and muscle aches, dizziness, and difficulty breathing. Therefore if you are concerned about a severe cold aggravating the flu, you must ensure you prevent your situation from worsening by receiving preventive care from urgent care in Houston, TX, to possess a measure against the flu.
What If You Develop the Flu after Seeking Urgent Care?
The flu can affect you even after you seek urgent care by receiving vaccines that maximize your protection. However, your body will possess a mechanism to fight the flu because of your adopted preventive measures.
If the flu attacks you even after taking the precautions, consider treating yourself at home without visiting your doctor, clinic, or an emergency room. Instead, you can see the neighborhood drugstore requesting over-the-counter medications to deal with the aches and pains bothering you. The drugstore can also provide decongestants to combat congestion. Besides the above, you must ensure you drink plenty of fluids without considering alcohol or beer to keep yourself hydrated. Remaining in bed to give your body time to battle the infection also helps.
If you receive some medications within 48 hours of the severe cold symptoms affecting you, they also help you deal with the situation. However, it would help if you didn’t consider taking antibiotics that are ineffective against bacterial infections and will not function against the flu caused by a virus. Despite the fear in people’s minds about the flu being a harmful condition, the reality is entirely different. The flu makes you ill for a week or longer, but you can get better by resting and treating the symptoms at home.
When Does a Common Cold Result in the Flu?
A severe cold results in the flu if you are in the high-risk category over 65 or have a weakened immune system from medicines or chronic health conditions. Health issues like asthma, lung disease, and cardiovascular problems also put you in the high-risk category that might aggravate a severe cold into the flu. Children under two and five, besides pregnant women, are also in the high-risk category and must seek treatment for indications of the flu from the urgent care clinic near me soon after they develop the initial symptoms to avoid visiting emergency rooms or hospitals that generally don’t accept patients with signs which they consider are not the flu.
Emergency rooms and hospitals are better reserved for severely ill people with injuries from accidents, et cetera. Therefore visiting these facilities merely because you fear the flu will not benefit you because you will likely not receive any treatment from the facility. Instead, if you see urgent care near you for the symptoms soon after their onset, you will find it convenient to avoid the flu before it affects you.
NeuMed Modern Urgent Care treats all patients approaching them for urgent care for a severe cold that might aggravate the flu if left untreated. Consult this urgent care center at the onset of the symptoms of a cold to avoid a severe infection like the flu to benefit your general health.
