I find that it's very hard for me to accurately report on how sick I actually am, so it's not surprising to me that you were underreporting. Most of the "being sick is bad/horrid/nasty/annoying/frustrating/scary" stuff is in my head, so it winds up sort of being this problem between "Well, if I say what's going on physically, I wind up underreporting because a lot of the problem is the mental strain of the physical nastiness" and "If I say what's going on in my head, people will think I'm over-reacting because they're not here and don't understand how terrible I feel."

Maybe that extends into other things -- sometimes it's hard to know what's going to be taken as overreaction and what's going to be seen as a perfectly reasonable (if not rational) response to a difficult situation.

::wafts gently scented steam at you instead of a hug::