Coughing Icon Suitable
I'm sick. I've been sick for since last Tuesday. Bad, wracking coughs that occasionally come in sessions where I can't breathe for a minute or two.
The thing is, this isn't just me having a cold, it's aftereffects of something that happened several years ago.
I went to Navy boot camp at 18, a location that is set just outside Chicago, and was there from late September until mid December. I got the flu shortly after I was given the flu vaccine, just about early October. The same October that saw my division caught out in a blizzard while marching over a mile between two locations on the base, said blizzard hit us right after PT (Physical Training), actually, so we were still dotted with sweat while marching through a freezing snowstorm in Illinois.
Treated only with tylenol, cough drops and being told to drink more water, the flu became walking pneumonia. When I dropped from being unable to get air between wracking coughs, and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, they didn't believe I had pneumonia up until the moment my chest X-rays were developed and looked at. Finally given some meds, I was sent back to my division of fellow recruits within four hours of me leaving. Unfortunately, the infection from the fluid in my lungs had spread to the tissue around my lungs, and I had to be drugged out of my mind the next day, because it felt as if someone was breaking my ribs from the inside. Every time I breathed.
It took several weeks to recover, but the lack of proper care and meds for weeks before (from flu to walking pneumonia to actually being treated, it was 5 weeks) left my lungs (particularly my right lung) with scarring. I don't really have a problem when I run (then again, I hate running), or day to day, but whenever I get anything where I cough? The coughing lasts for weeks.
So yeah, I'm miserable and exhausted and my brain's rattled from coughing from waking to falling asleep, and I apologize in advance for any continued whining on the subject.
The thing is, this isn't just me having a cold, it's aftereffects of something that happened several years ago.
I went to Navy boot camp at 18, a location that is set just outside Chicago, and was there from late September until mid December. I got the flu shortly after I was given the flu vaccine, just about early October. The same October that saw my division caught out in a blizzard while marching over a mile between two locations on the base, said blizzard hit us right after PT (Physical Training), actually, so we were still dotted with sweat while marching through a freezing snowstorm in Illinois.
Treated only with tylenol, cough drops and being told to drink more water, the flu became walking pneumonia. When I dropped from being unable to get air between wracking coughs, and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, they didn't believe I had pneumonia up until the moment my chest X-rays were developed and looked at. Finally given some meds, I was sent back to my division of fellow recruits within four hours of me leaving. Unfortunately, the infection from the fluid in my lungs had spread to the tissue around my lungs, and I had to be drugged out of my mind the next day, because it felt as if someone was breaking my ribs from the inside. Every time I breathed.
It took several weeks to recover, but the lack of proper care and meds for weeks before (from flu to walking pneumonia to actually being treated, it was 5 weeks) left my lungs (particularly my right lung) with scarring. I don't really have a problem when I run (then again, I hate running), or day to day, but whenever I get anything where I cough? The coughing lasts for weeks.
So yeah, I'm miserable and exhausted and my brain's rattled from coughing from waking to falling asleep, and I apologize in advance for any continued whining on the subject.