A few quirks in the works

Monday November 21, 2011

First David’s Story.

A young neighbor dropped by on a Saturday morning with his infant son. The boy had a nasty cold with warning flares streaming from both nostrils. He let his son down to run around the barnyard while we chatted whereupon I learned the boy likes to fetch things and carry them around, including tools I had out and some I didn’t actually have out yet that he was joyous over finding and bringing out for us.

The conversation was short, he fetched the boy and they went off to the woods for some father-son bonding time.

I went back to work and did not think more about it until I developed a nasty head cold with a hearty, productive cough a few days later.   After a week I was about sick of this and figured it must be about to wind down, play itself out and let me get back to well being. Instead, I began having more symptoms from the flu spectrum, nighttime chills, fever, fatigue, achy muscles & increasing trips to the bathroom when I supposed to be sleeping.

Okay, I have been here before, one of those flus that starts out as a cold and closes as a flu. After three nights of this, I decided maybe this wasn’t just a flu, there were just too many symptoms and all getting worse by the day. I just had a feeling this might not be a flu & unlike myself, I called the doctor and to my good fortune there was a 15 minute slot available that afternoon.


At first review of my chart, he chuckled when he read that my first sign of fever was Sunday night, and here it was only Wednesday and I was already whining for help? That was before he listened to my lungs to which he replied, “I see, you were right. Pneumonia, bilateral. This is serious, but it won’t kill you.” That got my attention. He quickly moved on to writing down exactly what I needed to do before returning for a follow-up visit in 10 days to see if he had guessed correctly. You see, he treated me for presumed bacterial pneumonia. Because there are so many causes of pneumonia & there is no time to waste trying to isolate the specific cause, you go for the most likely suspect first, so he could be wrong or only partially right so they have to have me back to confirm success before they let me go.

For those of you not already well acquainted with pneumonia, I recommend the Wikipedia entry as an excellent summary of this malevolent disease.


I must credit my doctor for a job well done. Although we are not out of the woods yet, I am feeling much better. My follow-up visit is still many days off, but I learned yesterday that young boy got over his cold in time and is fine – no pneumonia for him. That was great news because pneumonia is most deadly in children (principally in under developed countries these days), and the elderly (i.e. those much older than me ;)) and those with impaired immune systems. First time for me, and I hope the last.

Now Sherry’s Stories

As those of you who have followed this blog know, I had quite a problem with my eyes beginning and Texas and lasting for a month or so.  Burning, watering, extreme sensitivity to light.  I thought it was an allergy but allergy meds did no good.   Eventually it cleared up, mostly.

When I went in for my annual eye check of contacts, I mentioned this to my doctor who said he saw a minor infection and would treat me for it.  Fine.   BUT the treatment brought the problems back full force-burning, watering, extreme light sensitivity.  In looking into what was up, we found that the antibiotic/steroid drops used to treat this contained sulfa, the only drug to which I am allergic.  So I stopped the drug and the symptoms went away.  I’ll be going back to my doctor for a clean eye bill of health same time David goes back for his.

But the good news is that yesterday I went out and did a 2.5 mile walk/run with EXCELLENT results other than I am abysmally out of shape.  So I will be slowly building back up and though I am happy to be able to run again and hopefully get rid of some of this 15 pounds I’ve gained in the past nearly 3 months, I don’t enjoy running any more than I ever did.

And more good news is that today David was up on the roof doing the final waxing for Winnona. He’s recovered and She’s totally covered now.
That’s the news from here.   Hope you enjoyed the opening sunset from Winnona’s Virginia Camping spot.