March 17th, 2011 is a day that will live in personal infamy. I wouldn’t know until three seconds days later, but that is when I fell to pneumonia.

For the majority of a week I sported a fever (high score: 104°F), didn’t feel like eating or drinking, suffered pain in damn near every joint in my body, and couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time. It was awesome. I was too tired to even hallucinate.

I’m pretty sure the only reason I survived was thanks to the antibiotics I was prescribed in the middle of that week (I sure as hell wasn’t turning things around by myself)… which had the unexpected—at least to me—side-effect of making me vulnerable to other opportunistic disease. Pneumonia is a buildup of pus in your lung (I did not know that), and the antibiotic was able to kill the bacteria that was owning me—but it couldn’t clean out the pus in my lung. That pus became fertile ground for any other opportunistic bug that passed my way.

End result: doctor-recommended quarantine. One month quarantine.

I didn’t quite make that—I started being social again this Wednesday—but I at least waited until my cough had disappeared before re-emerging into the world. I was even able to telecommute, thanks to my office being rather laid-back and flexible. That said, I strongly suspect the office is where I was infected—I’m still (mentally) glaring at my coworkers for that.

Most impressive to me, ultimately, was how winded I got walking around my house once I had the energy to move. I don’t think the pneumonia had actually conquered all that much of my lungs (it was apparently located in my right lower lobe)… but it was still enough to make climbing a staircase a challenge.

I’m not sure how to wrap this post up, so I’ll steal someone else’s schtick:

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