Sick Tale

I've been sick since November 2nd.

Fever, chills, aches, cough, exhaustion: those were the symptoms for the first several days. I realize this is kind of dorky, but here's a chart of the highs and lows of my body temperature during this time (lows often with the help of Tylenol):



After the first day or so it was pretty clear that this was H1N1 influenza. The individual symptoms (cough, sore throat, chills, fever, headache, body aches, etc) were not all that severe. I had had more persistent cough. I had had worse sore throat. But combined, this thing wiped me out, and I feel like I spent the first 4 days and nights in bed, weighed down by as many quilts and comforters as I could find in the house, drifting in and out of sleep. Lauren said she had never seen me so ill.

By the evening of November 6th, though, I was feeling much better. My fever had broken, and it seemed like the worst of it was over. This made sense, since most H1N1 cases reportedly last 3 to 4 days.

But the next day? Bam, more fever. In fact, my highest fever of the week: 102.7. WTF?

Anyway, several more days passed and eventually I found that my daytime temps were in the normal range for several days in a row. This seemed like a good thing, even though I still felt run down and had a persistent cough. The weird thing? I was still spiking a low fever every night: 99.9, 100.5, 100.2, 100.9.

I had called my doctor's office on November 11th to see if they thought I should be seen. The nurse basically said "take an expectorant and call in a couple days if you're not better." Finally, on Friday 11/13 (after spiking 100.9 the night before) I called the doc and said I needed to be seen.

The diagnosis? Pneumonia. Or, in the words of the doctor, I have "a touch of pneumonia."

If you ask me, this is kind of like being told you're a touch pregnant.

I wonder when the flu ended and the pneumonia started. November 7th? November 10th?

Anyway, hard core antibiotics should take care of the pneumonia within a couple of days. Let's hope so. Enough already. I've got a chicken coop to winterize.

Ps. Everyone at my office--which provides health care services directly to college students--had the opportunity to get the H1N1 vaccination on Wednesday, November 11th. I guess that's about 10 days too late for me.