Sleeping on a park bench

I think I have pneumonia. Really. I think I might. I have had it before. Once. It was the summer of 1992 (I think) or maybe it was 1991. Either way, it was many years ago, before I was married and my chest hurt then like it does now.

I don’t remember exactly how it all started for me, the getting sick thing. I do remember all the test over the many college years. I remember the health department and the “free” services at the hospitals.

History lesson: I grew up with a horrid cough. I was always coughing at night and it seemed to be worse in the fall and the spring, sometimes it flared up in the winter too. It seemed to be seasonal. It never slowed me down. It was never accompanied by a cold or flu or any other illness. Just a cough, and mostly at night. I also grew up in a house with a smoking parent. This cough could shake down the Empire State Building. Seriously. Unless people heard me cough and were looking directly at me they did not believe that sound came out of me. I was a heavy youth at a massive fifty pounds in sixth grade. I used to have to fight my way with the others to stand my ground to prove the wind would not blow me off a boat. I proved I was strong. So you can imagine how a sound so big would be unbelievable.

At any rate, this cough seemed to fade over the years after my father quit smoking. Hmm? During my years in college my bronchial musicality came back at twice its force. I knew I was run down, taking 23 hours, in the school’s annual play (a last minute decision based on the begging on the parts of the cast members when another cast member left school). I wore myself out. The cough could have brought the dorm down. So I decided to have it checked out. A round of antibiotics for a poorly looking throat and a sickly sounding chest yielded no results. Not too much worry, we started with some low gun antibiotics as I was not really that sick, my white count was close to normal and we had no reason to think it wouldn’t work. Fourteen days later I was actually feeling worse. Still no fever, but my chest was hurting and my cough was no better.

So a few tests were in order. More blood work, of course. An x-ray showed a spot on my bronchial tubes that looked questionable. So a stronger dose of antibiotic was given and two weeks later I was still sick. Now it was time for the big guns. The doctors, yes, now there were three, wanted a culture of that spot on my bronchial tubes. UHM, what?! Oh, you mean you want me to cough in that petrie dish? Here you go. The results: in conclusive. So next they wanted to stick this tube thing down my throat and scrap/cut a little of that spot away to culture it. Kind of like this. UHM, what?! But the spot was high on my bronchial tube so it wouldn’t be so bad. UHM, what?! They did and it was gross. The results showed it was a strong strep infection that had settled in and made itself ever so cozy but should respond easily to Erythromycin.

DING! DING! ALLERGY! ALLERGY! DING! DING!

That stuff is going to kill me before it kills what ails me, I said. They patted my hand and said that there are some strong side effects common with e-mycin, but not to worry. No, you need to hear me loud and clear. While I do have all those side effects that make my stomach twist in torture it also makes my heart do funny things and my breathing is a bit messed up. So on to option number two.

We made the decision to opt for another medicine that should work well and was a bit stronger. I took it for two weeks, still I was very sick. The doctors increased the dosage and found that the infection just seemed to be resistant to everything they tried. Finally a plan that worked: we would trick the infection. First we continued with the super-duper mega pill for a full month then we pulled the switcharoo. Basically, we knocked it down with one drug then we knocked it out with another while it was down for the count.

History lesson over; my story is getting long (as usual) and I am not even to the park bench yet.

I was part of the University Of Southern Mississippi Carillon. We were headed to England for a 3 hour 10 day tour. It was four days before the departure date and I was coughing again, terribly. I had no idea what was going on with my coughing again. Within two days I had gone from having a bad cough to some severe pain in my chest. Some blood work was done and my white count was very elevated. My lungs sounded bad, or rather, one lung sounded bad while the other did not sound at all. X-rays were ordered immediately. My left lung was full and my right lung was half full, of what I never learned. The doctors were not concerned about me being contagious, but they wanted me admitted to the hospital right away.

I am a bit stubborn, see. So I said no, I am going to England. We discussed my history with this strange infection we thought we had knocked out and reluctantly they let me walk out with about five different drugs to take over the next month (the least expensive of which was $5.00/pill). I make it clear to our director about my diagnosis and that I was supposed to get as much sleep as possible. I had planned on sleeping on the plane flight over there (I had some meds for this anyway as I do NOT like to fly). I had also planned on sleeping anytime we were on the bus traveling. That did not work out so well (a post for another day) and I wound up going about sixty hours without sleep. One of our fist stops was to take a tour of Bath. I practically fell off the tour bus and onto the green in the center of town. We made our way to Bath Abbey and I was about to collapse. I almost did. So there I sat on a park bench near the Abbey in Bath having to choose between a special once in a lifetime tour of the Abbey or sleeping. My title says it all: I chose sleeping on a park bench.