How long can a person be sick?

Sick, sick, sick- at least it keeps my mind off the massive amount of school looming ahead of me, but for serious, Josh has been sick for two weeks and I have been sick for one. This is yucky sick too- like I don't want to move, my head hurts, my throat hurts, I'm having trouble breathing kind of sick. My mom thinks we have the swine flu but I am assured we don't. We both had the flu a little at the beginning but now we are just coughing all over the place and that kind of thing but I am amazed at how long this has continued. Any suggestions?