A Little Cautionary Narrative

[Captdon]

I thought I had it bad but this scares the hell out of me. Glad you are getting there. Fight the good fight and be well.

[Mornac]

It was the first week in January, and after several days of bad coughing and being short of breath, I went to a hospital emergency room - my own family physician having no time to see me - where I was given some drugs and sent home. The next day, I went to an urgent care clinic, where they gave me different drugs and again sent me home. On January 7th, I went back to the emergency room, where my body shut down halfway across the lobby. I remember being put in a wheelchair and pushed rapidly down a hallway, and when I woke up they told me that I'd been fully sedated with a tube down my throat for ten days. Double pneumonia with sepsis. While I was out, they were uncertain as to which way it/I would go.

After regaining consciousness, I spent a couple of weeks in the ICU, unable to eat or drink and with a "trach" or tube inserted in my throat to supply me with oxygen and another in my stomach to provide me with nutrition. I lost forty pounds in the first three weeks - a diet I most definitely do not recommend.

--Sorry to hear about that, Wolf. Glad you're feeling better.

[Standing Wolf]

--Sorry to hear about that, Wolf. Glad you're feeling better.

Thanks, I'm slowly getting back to normal. Or as normal as I was before.

I was thinking this morning that the whole experience has had two very positive outcomes. One is that I've lost a shirt size along with a net loss of about 35 pounds and everybody tells me I'm looking much fitter than before.

The other was the reunion I had with my dog Gemma, after being away for 67 days. (When you're the center of a dog's universe for its entire life - more than six years, in this case - and then you just suddenly disappear, it's hard to imagine what they must think.) I was sitting down when they let her in the room - because I was still very unsteady on my feet and she would have knocked me on my butt in a second - and she ran across the room and launched herself onto the sofa beside me, began frantically wiggling, rubbing her snout and face on my pants leg and trying to stand on her head. (A 60-pound pit mix trying to stand on its head on a sofa is pretty entertaining.) Then every twenty seconds or so, she would just stop and stare at my face, like she was reassuring herself that I was really there. Dogs are just the best in so many ways.

[MisterVeritis]

I heard a smart man tell me how he discovered who loved him more, his wife or his dog. He locked them both in the trunk of his car for ten minutes. When he opened the trunk he had his answer.

[jimmyz]

Thanks, I'm slowly getting back to normal. Or as normal as I was before.

I was thinking this morning that the whole experience has had two very positive outcomes. One is that I've lost a shirt size along with a net loss of about 35 pounds and everybody tells me I'm looking much fitter than before.

The other was the reunion I had with my dog Gemma, after being away for 67 days. (When you're the center of a dog's universe for its entire life - more than six years, in this case - and then you just suddenly disappear, it's hard to imagine what they must think.) I was sitting down when they let her in the room - because I was still very unsteady on my feet and she would have knocked me on my butt in a second - and she ran across the room and launched herself onto the sofa beside me, began frantically wiggling, rubbing her snout and face on my pants leg and trying to stand on her head. (A 60-pound pit mix trying to stand on its head on a sofa is pretty entertaining.) Then every twenty seconds or so, she would just stop and stare at my face, like she was reassuring herself that I was really there. Dogs are just the best in so many ways.

Gemma is very smart in sensing that you were recovering and to not jump onto your person but instead next to where you were sitting on the couch. Great dog!

[countryboy]

It was the first week in January, and after several days of bad coughing and being short of breath, I went to a hospital emergency room - my own family physician having no time to see me - where I was given some drugs and sent home. The next day, I went to an urgent care clinic, where they gave me different drugs and again sent me home. On January 7th, I went back to the emergency room, where my body shut down halfway across the lobby. I remember being put in a wheelchair and pushed rapidly down a hallway, and when I woke up they told me that I'd been fully sedated with a tube down my throat for ten days. Double pneumonia with sepsis. While I was out, they were uncertain as to which way it/I would go.

After regaining consciousness, I spent a couple of weeks in the ICU, unable to eat or drink and with a "trach" or tube inserted in my throat to supply me with oxygen and another in my stomach to provide me with nutrition. I lost forty pounds in the first three weeks - a diet I most definitely do not recommend.

One phenomenon noted by many serious pneumonia victims is the bizarre dreams - many of them extended, detailed nightmares of the ugliest kind. I can still recall many of the ones I experienced. The difference between those nightmares and the ones we have when we're healthy is that your brain is so scrambled that when you wake up, what happened in the nightmares and other dreams is automatically incorporated into your memories; it is literally impossible for you to differentiate what you know as reality and what was done or said to you in the dreams. I spent about a week-and-a-half convinced that I'd been the target of an assassination plot. Other of the dreams were so bizarre and ugly that I will probably never relate them to anyone.

A couple of weeks out of the ICU, I was released to a rehab facility. My muscle strength, particular in my legs, was negligible. I was finally allowed to eat, but my brain and throat didn't want to at that point. The whole business of eating seemed strange, and it took me some time to re-learn how to do it. With physical therapy, I was finally able to stand, then walk with a walker, and then a cane. The "trach" came out the first week of March, and the feeding tube two days later. I was finally discharged, with a bag full of pills, last Friday. I am still not that steady on my feet, and just walking from one room to another makes me breathe heart and makes my heart pound, but I'm working on it.

Fortunately, I had (and have) a great support system - a 5'2" Scots-Irish dynamo of a wife who eats bureaucracies and red tape for breakfast, an adult son who has made himself immediately available to me for assistance 24/7, etc.

Now the point of all this is not to bore you with the story of my illness, as some are fond of doing, nor to elicit your sympathy; nor would I be fishing for your admiration for "how bravely I fought through" my medical adversity. I could go into much more gory and unpleasant detail...like how for many weeks I was unable to clean up after myself and had to be regularly cleaned up by strangers, not always in an expeditious manner, or how they almost killed me a few weeks ago with an antibiotic to which it appears I am violently allergic...but the point is simply this: if you have not gotten a pneumonia vaccination, you are gambling with your life, your health, and innumerable other valuable and beyond valuable things.

Yes, I was a few weeks short of my 65th birthday when I was struck down, but it isn't just old people and babies who get pneumonia. In fact, fully half of those who are afflicted with serious, life-threatening pneumonia attacks - not counting those with autoimmune problems - are aged 18-57. You can be a 22-year-old and run marathons and still be at risk.

Do yourself what might be the greatest favor ever, and get that pneumonia vaccine as soon as humanly possible. While you are at it, insist that those you love get one, too. This is a medical condition the effects of which will be with me for the rest of my life. Trust me - you don't want it. Don't gamble with your life, as I did. It really is beyond stupid.

Got a pneumonia vaccine today, largely because of this story. I certainly didn't do it "as soon as humanly possible", but better late than never. Thanks.

[Standing Wolf]

Got a pneumonia vaccine today, largely because of this story. I certainly didn't do it "as soon as humanly possible", but better late than never. Thanks.

You're very welcome, and thanks for letting me know.

[Common]

Vaccines are important, older americans should get shingles vaccination and certainly both of the pnuemonia shots, you need two pnuemonia shots, they added a shot which adds more strains.

If you have any kind of lung dysfunction pnumonia shots are a necessity. Older americans should also be tested for Hep C which is now curable

[Peter1469]

I would be careful. The shingles vaccine causes shingles often. Focus on a strong immune system- something vaccines breach.

[countryboy]

Vaccines are important, older americans should get shingles vaccination and certainly both of the pnuemonia shots, you need two pnuemonia shots, they added a shot which adds more strains.
That's why my doc wanted me to get the pneumonia vaccine, I have asthma (though it is very well controlled and hardly bothers me at all), and my age. I'll hafta ask him about the other shot.
If you have any kind of lung dysfunction pnumonia shots are a necessity. Older americans should also be tested for Hep C which is now curable