7 Things People Don’t Tell You About Pneumonia

While many of you might’ve thought I have been on a hiatus due to winning the lottery and spending the past month enjoying my new home in Italy, I’ve actually just been sick. Really, really sick. How sick, you ask? So sick that I couldn’t even read. THAT sick.

You see, I went home to Texas for a quick, early Christmas visit with family in mid-December and came back with the worst gift ever: H1N1 flu. (That’s the swine one, in case you didn’t know.)

It’s an evil, evil virus, folks. As in fetal position for six days. And then for me, it quickly turned into pneumonia, with a side of kidney and liver failure. I spent many days in the hospital. Christmas and New Year’s never happened, really.

Basically, you know those stories you read in the newspaper about previously healthy people who get the flu and die unexpectedly? Well, that was ALMOST me. I was one of the lucky ones who pulled through. (And for inquiring minds, I didn’t get my flu shot. I usually do, but I kept putting it off because our whole household had been sick with one thing or another since Halloween. I was waiting until my immune system had rebounded. Big, huge mistake.)

It’s been two weeks since I got out of the hospital now, and I’m still on oxygen. Which makes me feel about 90 years old, and is something that I never dreamed I’d need in my 40s.

Here are a few other things that no one ever told me about pneumonia. (Disclaimer: This is not any kind of medical advice and is based on my singular experience.)

1. When you are in the throes of pneumonia, before the antibiotics start to kick in, every time you cough, you will feel as though someone is reaching down through your lungs and pulling out your soul. And the sound will be violent. Horribly violent.

2. If you have pneumonia but don’t know it yet, the whole not-being-able-to-breath thing can catch you off-guard. At one point, my lips and fingernails turned blue from not enough oxygen. I didn’t know it though because I was lying in the dark, clutching my chest and stomach. When my husband did realize it, that’s when we called the ambulance.

3. Once your lungs fill up with bacteria-laced fluid, it takes a long, long time to get them back to normal. I thought once I’d completed the high-powered antibiotic regimen, I’d be home free. Nope. It can take weeks and sometimes months for you to get a clear chest x-ray. I’m still waiting for mine.

4. In addition to your lungs, it takes a long time for your whole body to get over pneumonia. I didn’t believe that at first. When the doctors told me I’d need another two to three weeks off of work, at least, to recover, I scoffed. I now take back my scoffing.

5. Pneumonia is as much about fatigue as it is about fluid on your lungs. And when I say fatigue, I mean bone-tired fatigue. It’s the kind of fatigue where, in the beginning, taking a shower takes every ounce of energy you have. The kind of fatigue where, I promise you, you will not have what it takes to shave your legs for weeks. Because it’s just too much.

6. Pneumonia jacks up your sleep patterns. You see, you spend so much time in the beginning coughing your head off that you can’t sleep. Not a wink. Then, if you end up in the hospital, too, there’s no sleeping there, either, because they’re busy taking your blood and your vitals and changing your IV 24 hours a day. So you end up going home, an exhausted insomniac who takes a few short naps during the day and stares at the ceiling, pondering the meaning of life all night.

7. Pneumonia can bring you and your spouse closer together. You wouldn’t think this would be true. After all, odds are he has now seen you at your complete and utter worst. He may or may not have had to wash your hair when you didn’t have the energy. He may or may not have had to clean up bio-hazmat things and help you on and off the toilet when you were at your most frail. And let’s face it, there is no way to rock an oxygen tube in your nose. But for us, we’re closer. Because I am usually always in control. And now I wasn’t. He had to step up and take care of me at a very basic and raw level. I couldn’t have made it through this without him. And he almost lost me forever. These kinds of things create a different bond than we had before. And so far, it’s a good one.

Have you ever had H1N1 and/or pneumonia? What’s been your experience?

 


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