Some recent history

I thought I would give a bit more background on my current illness. I am using this blog as a chance to experiment with some writing on the topic of global warming related illnesses so will also be looking at other possible health links yo global warming as I go along.

I was taken ill quite suddenly back in mid September of last year. My first symptoms were a cough, chest pain and pain in my prostate. Then I spent a weekend in bed not wanting to do anything except rest and sleep, with severe nausea and no appetite at all. In a few days I had lost six or seven lbs. I went to an urgent care clinic that Monday and was checked out quite thoroughly. Since they couldn't find anything specific wrong with me they told me to see my family doctor later in the week and sent me on my way. By the Wednesday when I saw my own physician I was quite ill, I felt clammy to the touch and was finding it hard to walk or drive. She checked my chest and found signs of pneumonia and sent me off for a chest X-ray.

The folks at the X-ray clinic told me I had indeed got pneumonia and I went straight to a pharmacy to fill my antibiotic prescription and pick up some face masks to protect others from catching my bug. Since then I have made slow progress over almost 9 months, but still get exhausted easily and am even more forgetful and disorganized than ever. Just walking up the steep steps from the beach can knock me out for a while and I fall asleep at the drop of a hat in the middle of the day. But this is already a big improvement over the early days when I was sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day and had trouble walking around the block.

I have managed to stay fairly cheerful through all this, but it is wearing on all of us, especially my wife Lucy who has been effectively a single Mom for much of this time. The girls (5 and 7) get excited if I come to pick them up from school these days or join them for breakfast or a trip to the park, for so long I couldn't even do these simple things as a Dad. Part of the reason I am excited to see if I have Crytococcal Disease is that it gives me more hope of a rapid recovery with treatment rather than the slow grind I have been experiencing so far and it gives me a better explanation of what has been wrong with me rather than just an atypical ewaponse to pneumonia.

I talked to a friend my age in Toronto who took two years to recover from pneumonia recently and recommended lots of sunshine which he felt helped. My friend John in the UK went through 5 years with Epstein Barr which is a terrifying thought. Luckily that is one of the possibilities my docs have ruled out. I remember John as a very fit guy who worked on his small farm in Norfolk and was always up with the sun, if even he could get so tired for all those years I guess I shouldn't complain!