pneumonia
So - it was pneumonia, all along. That is, it still is. It’s been three and a half weeks since the cloudy Wednesday afternoon when the fever set in (the fever I didn’t realize was a fever). I’ve made some tenuous but tangible progress in the past week or so. The end - the real end - is finally nigh. Boy, what an adventure this has been. To think I had bought a fresh chicken that day in April and surmised that I might even make coq au vin that weekend, if not that very afternoon!
Photo is from here.
When the coq au vin was eventually made, it was by Justin, and it turned out so disturbingly purple-brown with wine that I couldn’t bring myself to eat it for days. I must have thought it resembled organ meat too much to be appetizing.
It’s been a trying three and a half weeks. Three and a half weeks of coughing myself awake at night, getting up to hack or pee out the endless volumes of liquid I’ve imbibed, watching the moon move across the night sky during the various phases of a single sleepless night. Priceless.
I can go on and on - and I will. Three and a half weeks of really getting to know guaifenesin, of having chest wall pains arrive and return, arrive and return. Weeks of feeling frail, dependent, despondent, defeated, dejected, and - need I say it? Depressed. A string of nights where I just cry from desperation - wondering, waiting, hoping, praying for the sickness to just go away. When will it? It doesn’t, it continues. I can’t sleep.
I know it may sound like a stretch to say this, but I do feel I have a better understanding of chronic illness. Just a short stretch of sleepless nights had made me feel early-on that I’d already endured an eternity. It’s an experience that I did not wish for myself, but I feel better-informed and wiser for it. It’s the experience of not having a working body, of loss of control over one’s body, of not being totally physically able, and the resultant effects on your psyche. In worse times, it’s the overwhelming sense of frustration, helplessness, utter wretchedness, and gloom.
To put it in concrete terms that no one will enjoy reading - it’s the nausea as you take a few, feverish bites of food; it’s the dank, awful stench of a night’s sweated sheets and pajamas; it’s the hopeful anticipation of your next medicine dosage as a step towards salvation; it’s the heaving coughs that lead to violent retching (mostly dry, thankfully); it’s the productive coughs that leak slobber, wetting your shirt sleeve, your pants, your car, the carpet.
It’s the heaving coughs that lead to violent retching as you brush your teeth one Saturday night, and unfortunately this time the gag reflex is fruitful - you vomit into the sink, from both your mouth and your nose. What a sensation. Like a forensic analyst, you see in the sink the bits of dinner that were and weren’t digested (you need to chew your noodles more) and then you realize - no, these things aren’t going to cleanly rinse down the drain, because they’re solids. The sink drain is for liquids only, remember? You forgot that when you threw up. You calmly clean it up with some paper towels, you clean the sink with some Comet, and you brush your teeth all over again.
Well, that’s it in a nutshell. It’s pretty damn gross. This is not to say that the past several weeks have been a total misery train (all aboard!)… But as a relatively healthy, living 30-year old, I struggle to understand how my wellness could have fallen to such lows. I write this not to wallow in the ordeal, but to document a time that was so inexplicably, ludicrously nightmarish.