Black death

About a month ago I started reading the book "Return of the Black Death-The World's Greatest Serial Killer." I had just gotten to the chapert "Building an identikit of the Killer" when I got very ill. I started coughing at night when I would lay down to sleep, no big deal, thought it was allergies, went to the doctor. My eyes were itching again too. Did xrays, blood work, EKG and all were fine. The dr put me on Nasonex. It seemed to help a small bit, but there was a high pollen rate so I didn't think much about it.

8 days later the coughing get worse, tried warmer showers, vaopizers, anti histamines, nothing helped much. a couple days later coughing all the time, total dry cough, talking was hard, it was cough-word-cough-cough-word-cough so I called the evil nurse line. They asked me all these questions, stuff about my broken leg, my neck, nothing that had any bearing on my cough, then we got disconneted, so I called back. New nurse wants to ask the questions again, I say no just talk about cough, after a few breathing related questions she says call your dr. Its night but I call the dr, luckily my dr is on call. He calls, doesn't even block the id but anyway (or anyways for Laurie!), he says he can see me in the morning. I don't have a fever at that point, everyone has been telling me if I get a fever go to the er. I drive out and get cough meds, 45 mins later I have a fever of 102.8 so I drive to the er.

I am so warm when I get to the ER they don't bother taking my temp, they just wrap me in cold blankets. Stick me in front of one of the oldest xray machines I have every seen, its blue. Take my blood, do a culture, stick an oxygen clip on my finger. The ER dr is an old friend of my former dr of 15 yrs. He tells me how they dream of having their daughters who are currently in med school work with them at this hospital. I am coughing too hard to tell him they are nuts.

One of my good friends breaks her middle toe around then and goes to the same ER. we see each others car but miss each other, oh well. I have pneumonia, lower lobe of left lung is non-functional. The ER dr told me he had this kind of pneumonia 6 weeks ago. I am given the choice of being admitted or going home, am told it will get worse until the antibiotics kick in. I choose home figuring I will get more sleep there. They give me a loading dose, some to take with me and some T3. They tell me to take the T3 at night to give my muscles a rest from coughing.

I go home, it gets worse, I take the T3 and it feels like I am drowning, after a bit I am still drowning but I don't care. A friend stays on the phone with me for several nights, talks me through the "drowning" to the not caring part. Every time I cough really badly he says "are you alright?" and every time I say "no, I have pneumonia." There is a strange comfort in that.

If its Friday it must be... Iowa

So I happily drove down to meet the Spitfire girl in West Des Moines. I listened to a mystery on tape, interspersed with Al Stewart's new cd "Beach Full of Shells." On the way I notice all the Minnesota Rest stops are closed for no apparent reason, this is not good since I tend to stop at them to stretch my legs, or more importantly keep my ankle from stiffening, there are also no state patrols. Once I reach Iowa there are open rest areas, and tons of state patrol. I counted 8 in a one mile stretch!

I watched an immature deer effortlessly leap a fence twice his hight and saunter toward the highway, I yelled "NO" at him, I doubt he heard but he did stop and freeze, so I did not have to live through my deer hitting fear. I have already hit a low flying goose in the rain which was rather surreal and unpleasant.

The first Iowa rest stop was strange. Shaped like a barn, with a film crew and some nice shiny state patrol men and their cars. There were also objects at regular intervals that might have been lights but looked more like the heads of a missile, I took pictures of course.