Rockin’ Pnumonia and A Boogie Woogie Flu!

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 9 Number 03
Rockin’ Pnumonia and A Boogie Woogie Flu!

And I was trying to be so good with my blog this year! This is only the third installment! In ’07 I wrote 20 – and I didn’t even start until August! In ’08 I wrote 23 – almost two a month! Yikes! What happened to me? Have I run out of things to say? Have events worthy of typing into the computer dwindled? Nah! I suck. Or I am busy. Tis hard to tell which.

Aaaaaanywaaaay.

I was actually going to write one of these blasted things on the 31^st of May, but something happened. It hasn’t happened since January of 2012. Before that it hadn’t happened since September of 2008. This time, though, it happened worse than it ever has in my life!

On the 31^st I took Hillbilly Mom to breakfast and shopping like any given Sunday. Afterward, I came home and took a nap. Also like any given Sunday. However, unlike any given Sunday, I awoke from that nap SICK. I wasn’t just sick, I was pretty sure I was dying!

Hells Bells! I had a 103.8 degree fever! I was, almost literally, in hell – or at least it felt like it. That fever lasted for 72 hours!

Sleeping was difficult, because I was soaked with sweat and couldn’t sleep through all the wailing. Someone was rhythmically howling “God, please help me!” Over and Over and Over! I would awaken and find out it was me! Twenty minutes of that “sleep” at a time was not helping.

In the daytime I would fall asleep from fever and fatigue. I would sleep, seemingly, forever then wake up exactly 1 minute later! That happened thousands of times!

I was finally able to bring the fever down and felt like I was getting better. No such luck. Next was 48 hours of spiking fever - from 100 to 102 and change then back down and back up again. Over and Over and Over.

Then, finally, I made it to a healthcare professional. I was stabilizing at a cool and constant 101 degrees when she gave me about a 55 gallon drum-full of antibiotics through a hypodermic needle stuck into my ass! On top of that, I was given a Z-Pak to start taking the next day. After that, the fever finally started to normalize.

Pneumonia. It sucked – five days of fever; seven days in bed; as many changes of bed linen as possible; countless t-shirts and underoos soaked through and deliriously piled in the corner of my room. I had sweat so much throughout that week that I had to order a new mattress! Hopefully, it will be here soon, this one is still kind of sloshy.

As of the writing of this blog installment, I am, for the most part, better. The only problem now is the fatigue. I still get tired VERY easily. In fact, tonight I didn’t get to take my two and a half hour nap after work and I am really feeling it right now. The Doc said that the fatigue could last for weeks. I have heard that it lasts for months for some people.

I would like to thank Hillbilly Mom for coming by and forcing soup down my gullet and putting a cooler filled with bottled water within arm’s reach. I’m also appreciative all my friends and co-workers that kept waking me with text messages of well wishes. Actually, I wasn’t sleeping anyway!

Luckily, there is some good that came out of the whole sweaty mess!

I lost a few pounds. Probably, because I don’t think I ate much more than a can of soup in the first six days of the illness. ;)

I was also able to cut my pack a day smoking habit down to a cigarette or two a day or an occasional cigar. For those of you who know how much I have struggled with trying to quit smoking, I know it is not completely gone, but I’m pretty happy with the progress. A good by-product of the cut in smoking is the ginormous cut in salt! I don’t think I have salted my food once since I got back on solids! Yay me!

Another awesome thing that happened is that I turned my beverage drinking habits inside out. As many of you know, I would awaken, each morning, to my first drink of Diet Coke and go to sleep, each night, with my last drink of Diet Coke. Between those two drinks each day was… All Diet Coke. Of course, I would sometimes drink water if I went out for a meal, but more Diet Coke went into my body than you can imagine. Now, I drink water from the beginning until the end of my day and I have a soda (as a treat) with a meal. Hell, when I went to purchase provisions last week, buying Diet Coke didn’t even cross my mind!

So, there was a silver lining or two on the cloud of pneumonia that was in my lungs.

Of course, that 3 day fever was pretty severe. If I could travel back in time and change it… I don’t know. Would I? Should I?

I will have to think about that.

Until Next Time,

Wayne

PS I MAY have fried some brain cells too. I don’t think I think as goodly as I used to.