Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was down with pneumonia for three weeks. Straight. Went to the doctor five times, got two different shots of steroids, two different shots of antibiotics, was prescribed my own nebulizer for daily breathing treatments, had five prescription inhalers, and also was prescribed two different oral antibiotics, a cough medicine with codeine, an antihistamine, and a separate medication for congestion. I felt like I was singlehandedly keeping the medical industry in business during that time – seriously! Add up the dollars for those visits and those meds plus the nebulizer – we’re talking mega-bucks here, and thank God for having great insurance coverage.
I joked to my boss, about a week after I returned to work, that I felt like I’d paid my dues for the winter season and that surely being so sick for so long would mean that I wouldn’t get sick again all winter.
WRONG!
And how.I took the family to Boston with me about two weeks ago. I had a business meeting to attend up there, and took an extra day off from work so we could spend some time sightseeing around a very neat city.
While we were there, strolling around Quincy Market before heading back to the airport, baby Catherine got sick as a dog. We’re talking simultaneously ruining her outfit, her sweater, her coat AND leaving a huge mess in her stroller for her dad to deal with while I tried to get her cleaned up and changed. Barely after getting settling onto the plane a couple hours later, she repeated the feat while on her father’s lap.
Ugh.
The day after getting home, I started feeling a little iffy, later at night. Thought I would get it out of my system quickly, like Cate did, and get on with life. But the next morning, everything was still abandoning my body like a tornado siren had sounded. And unlike Cate, I wasn’t able to take in any foods or liquids.
Not good.
So we headed to the E.R., figuring that they’d pump me full of (IV) liquids and send me home.
Nope. About six hours after arriving, I was instead admitted. In the not-quite-medical terms of the ER terms, my blood looked bad. The white blood count was twice the upper end of the normal range, and various other numbers were out of whack. Added to the fact that the IV wasn’t stopping my body’s internal evacuation and I earned myself a one-way ticket upstairs.
I still thought it was no big deal. I actually asked the admitting nurse if I would get to go home the next morning.
She laughed at me! For several minutes!
Nope.
Turns out that my immune system, already being severely strained from the pneumonia, was putting up no fight at all against a pretty nasty infection.
And so there I stayed for five days. Five very long days, where I got to see my daughter for half hour snatches once or twice a day and largely spent the rest of the time alone. Well…as alone as you can get while being visited by various doctors, nurses, aides and techs, who seemed to have made a pact that SOMEONE should come see me at least once an hour.
When I finally got out, a week ago, I was weak as a kitten, still not feeling great, but at least well enough to finish recuperating in my own home instead of in a hospital that was great at providing meds but horrible at providing rest.
And so that’s where I’ve been disappeared to, these last few weeks. Once home, I spent a lot of time sleeping or vegging, avoiding anything more strenuous than kissing baby Catherine or turning the pages of a book. I started back to work, from home, on Tuesday, and followed up with a partial day in the office today.
I am very pleased to report that I am doing much better now and I look forward to getting back on track with quite a number of posts that I have planned for this and my other blogs – stay tuned!
In the meantime, I’m busily shopping online for a new bubble!
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