2nd Week Home (by Jenn)

I am home from work now for the second week with pneumonia. Sure, it sounds great, having two weeks off from school, but I do not feel good enough for it to be a good time at all. Here is a little journey through the past four weeks of my life:

4 Weeks Ago:

• Get the flu. 103.9 degree fever for two days straight. Chills, fever, body aches, headaches, vomiting. Not pretty. It lasts for about 4-5 days. After that, I feel like I am getting a cold. Coughing starts.
  

3 Weeks Ago:

• Go to the state DECA conference for three days and two nights...with 80 high school students. Stay up doing room checks until about 12:30am both nights, get up at about 6:30am both days. Coughing starts getting much worse. Cough drops aren't seeming to help because my throat doesn't seem to be the problem. (Don't read this if you don't like TMI). I also start with the diarrhea problem.
  

February 26th:

• Coughing is still not going away and neither is the bathroom problem. I go to a Primary Care doctor that I used to go to a long time ago, not my favorite doctor in the world, but I need some help! She gives me these pills that are supposed to suppress my coughing and tells me to take Mucinex to dry up my head. The only problem here is that I don't have anything to dry up. I don't feel like I have a cold, I just have this miserable cough, and I had a low grade fever that day at the doctor to.

February 27th, My 30th Birthday:

• In Las Vegas! I have two margaritas, and am down for the count. I don't feel drunk, I just feel really weird and tingly. I try not to let this curb our good time, so I stay out (in the smoky club) coughing away. I notice the coughing is getting worse, so Rian and I go back to the hotel. We go to bed and I start coughing so hard, that I end up throwing up. Gross.

February 28th:

• Still in Vegas, have a nice day of shopping with my besties, and then we go to Margaritaville for dinner. I am noticing that I am still coughing a lot, and the sides of my ribcage are starting to hurt. I know something is definitely not right. I am thinking a few times during the day, "I think I need to go to the hospital." I don't say anything to Rian until very late that night after Margaritaville and a very bad few hours of Blackjack. I tell him I am thinking about the hospital, we decided to wait until Monday.

March 1st:

• Get home pretty early from Vegas. We go pick up Cameron and when we get to my parents house, I feel awful. I tell Rian that we don't have to go to the emergency room, but could we at least go to Urgent Care? Rian wants to know if I can wait until Monday, and I don't think I can (READ: He now feels so awful and guilty about this). We go to Urgent Care. I tell the doc how I am feeling and everything that has led up to this. He has me get a x-ray, a breathing treatment, and I take some nasty tasting cough medicine. While I am doing the breathing treatment, he rushes in, turns off the machine and tells me that I need to go to the ER right away. He is worried because I have been on an airplane, been sick and have a few other "risk factors". He thinks that I may have a blood clot in my lung and he is freaked. He calls the ER right away and tells them I am coming. We show up to the ER and even though the waiting room is pretty packed, I am rushed back into a room. I get the IV immediately, and then am sent down for a CT Scan. I come back, it takes an hour for results because it is past radiology hours. Luckily, Rian and I have a deck of cards from our trip to Vegas, so we played while we waited. Results back, luckily I just have pneumonia. I say luckily, because if I had a blood clot, it could have been a lot worse. I get TONS of medication and go home. I am told to take a few days off of school.

Monday-Wednesday:

• Feel like crap. Still coughing, extremely tired, and yuckiness.

Thursday:

• I go to a new doctor where my best buddy works. She is also a primary care. I go because I am still feeling like crap and need to see what is up. She tells me a ton of good information. Basically, I have a pretty bad pneumonia, she tells me to stay home this entire week as well, she gives me stronger antibiotics, she gives me another breathing treatment (those are like HEAVEN when you have pneumonia), and tells me that apparently having pneumonia feels a lot like mono. Your tiredness hits you suddenly and very hard. This is very true. She was a GREAT new doctor, and I feel like she really took good care of me.

This weekend:

• Feeling a little better, still very tired. Rian takes me out to get my (a little bit late) birthday present and to get some fresh air. We also went to the movies yesterday. It exhausted me, but it was nice to get out.
  

Today:

• Feeling a bit better. It is hard to explain. I feel like I have heavy lungs. It wears me out to carry Cameron up and down the stairs, but not as bad as last week. My ribs are still hurting (that is from all the hard coughing from last weekend). I am still tired, but it doesn't feel as overwhelming, which is good because Rian is out of town for today and tomorrow. I feel a lot better than I did, but if this was just a regular day I felt this way, I would still want to call in sick. It is hard to explain and very weird.
  

So that has been my month. I am definitely not looking for pity (except from Rian and my family occasionally), just wanted to let you know what has been going on. Good news: I got a new camera, so there will be a lot of new pictures and video of Cameron coming soon. Also, I get to take the students to Nationals this year, which is in Anaheim, California! Rian and Cameron are going to come too! So excited for that.