Man Flu Hats

Man flu is the cold that feels like the end of the world to the man who has it. The word is believed to date to the 1990s, and the Oxford English Dictionary traces its earliest use to a 1999 Usenet message. The register is a deathbed one. Columnists write of a husband hovering between a congested coma and near-certain demise by sniffles, too weak to lift the TV remote but strong enough to find the Häagen-Dazs in the freezer, a thermometer that must be broken, demands for soup, and funeral arrangements made just in case. A Christmas 2017 BMJ review by Kyle Sue even argued that men may fare worse with the flu, while calling for much better research. These hats are for the patient himself, who is the only one allowed to be dramatic about it. MAN FLU and MANFLUENZA are the plain badges, and PATIENT ZERO and the awareness foundation make it official. The sentence designs carry the last words: somebody call my mother, a fever of 99.9 degrees and a request to tell them I fought, a do not resuscitate order that holds until the soup arrives, a goodbye already said, and a remote that survived when strength did not. SOMEBODY CALL MY MOTHER and the 99.9 degrees design each come in a second colorway. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one through flu season, or give one to the man who has already said his goodbyes.