Lucky Number Fifteen, or, Our Unwelcome Christmas Guest
When I was younger, I got sick nearly every Christmas. I’d have some sort of cold or flu or upper respiratory thing, and Christmas Day was a miserable affair for me. I had weak lungs, still do. And every few years, that upper respiratory thing would end up being pneumonia. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a single time in my life that I have not had pneumonia within weeks of having the flu. When I was 40 and pregnant with Tater, I got pneumonia three days before Christmas. I was coughing and hacking and miserable. Years before, I got the flu on Christmas day, and pneumonia by New Year’s Day, and my kids were small and I was newly divorced.
Many of my Christmases were punctuated with a severe respiratory infection.
But once I passed 40, for some reason all that ugliness practically stopped. Instead of a cold or flu hitting me five or six times a year, I wouldn’t have any in a 12 month period. After a while, I would go years. I felt powerful! I had obviously been granted some sort of immunity! My inhaler got to go in a drawer and hardly saw the light of day. I didn’t buy Puffs by the pallet anymore. Even when everyone else in the house got sick, I was fine. Oh happy day! I got flu shots, got a pneumonia shot, and lived an invincible life. Well, sort of invincible. I had shoulder surgery, two knee surgeries, a hysterectomy, and carpal tunnel surgery within a six year span. And two years ago, I broke my leg in a spectacularly simple fall in the mountains. But I didn’t get the flu!
Until last week, that is. Despite my flu shot in October, I ended up with the flu. Felt like I’d run a marathon and climbed a mountain. I hurt so bad I took the heavy duty painkillers to sleep, and took two days off work. By the weekend, the flu symptoms were mostly gone, but I had developed a lovely, unproductive, hacking cough. By Monday night I knew – I had contracted the dreaded pneumonia again. Just like clockwork, during the holidays, following a bout of the flu.
The doctor was skeptical, and said my lungs sounded fine, but that due to my history, I had “won a trip to the xray.” Then she congratulated me on pneumonia number 15. That is how many times I’ve had it in my life. I thought I was done at 14. So, here it is Christmas and I’m on heavy antibiotics and steroid breathing treatments. I did catch it early, and while I have some fatigue, my body responded quickly to the medication and I feel pretty good, all things considered. But I could sure do without this happening at the holidays!
Merry Christmas!
