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Pneumonia

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 18 February 2025

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Over 2 weeks of feeling like shit, sleeping 16-18 hours plus a day, barely surviving every day at work.

I'm used to this, not "Used" to it, per-se, but more of the stoic philosophy that says ride it out until you get better, and sooner or later you'll wake up feeling a little (or a lot) better.

2 weeks, 2 days, until last Sunday I finally grab a cab and drag my sorry ass off to the hospital.

Work, they'd grown a little impatient with my misery, I had no choice, really.

The hospital, Emergency, 3 hours waiting to see a physician. The standard, and then some x-rays and it's Pneumonia.

Fine. Off to Shoppers to get a prescription, 5 days, 6 pills, I should be feeling fine around Thursday or Friday.

The week passes. Still sick as a dog, sleeping, work is to be barely survived, endured. All I want to do is to get home and back into bed. I eat out, nothing in my fridge, tacos, but they taste wretched and I've no appetite. Breakfast, same, food, generally, the same. I pick, fuss, eat a bit, and then go to bed. On a whim I go to the Co-op, buy 4 cans of Organic Soup, $5.00 per can, only it's as well garbage, I'm paying 10 cents for the can, 3 cents for the "organic" soup, which is nothing at all, for $5.00 in a restaurant you'd send it back, and you'd be right, and here I've filled a bag with this inedible nonsense. I'm too sick to cook and too sick not to.

The days are unendurably long. I'm not well. Not by a long shot. Thursday, working the day, collegue texts me that she'll be late. 4:30. 4:30 comes and passes, no show, 5:30, 6:30 and I'm on the phone with the owner, "Where the f@@#R! is .....", no call in, nothing, this place, it's murdering my every hope of survival. 

I'm not happy. 

A replacement is found, sent in to spell me off, and I'm home again to bed. 

Friday I'm better. I've slept, not well, but better.

Dreams, by the way, for the week. No liquor, no cigarettes (well, maybe 5 per day). Most days simply pass out in bed, the night sweats, wake when you wake, no memory of dreams. But one night, that i'm in a well lit warehouse, hundreds of other generic souls boxing up cutlery, boxes, hundreds, no soul to this, a factory, machine.

Then the next night a dream in which all the things, court filings, papers, business, it's bursting out my wallets, I'm disorganized in the extreme, everything I've ignored these past few weeks due to being sick is now piled up in bulbous exploding wallets and I need to get organized, get my shit together...

...and I'm awake for an hour or so before I figure out this was a dream, a fever dream, and the fever, it's filling my waking and sleeping hours and I'm not able to find when I'm myself.

***

Friday, Valentines Day, Saturday, the day after. These are separate posts. 

Sunday, my medicine, prescription, expired on Thursday, and I'm pretty sure I'm not getting better. And so I finally suck it up, cab once again to the hospital. 

3 more hours, a physician, the hospital, today, it's full. The waiting room, full to the brim, no seating, and so 3 hours today, it's a blessing. 

The last diagnosis, pneumonia, well, incorrect. They thought I had a more fashionable variant doing the rounds, prescribed accordingly, no, it seems I have the more classical variant.

I could have told them. 

A new prescription, 2 pills, 3X a day, 5 days until I'm out.

Home to bed, take my pills, pass out. 

Today, still exhausted but better able to manage reading a book, keeping on schedule with my pills. This will pass, for sure, but it's been so long since I've been myself, well, alive even, that I've forgotten and how will I know when I'm well again? Time will tell. Tomorrow, a double, merely have to survive and get through it...