"Between friends
there will always be disputes.
It is not in the disputes themselves
that we know our true friends,
it is in the way we address them."
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Over New Years 2012/2013 I was in the hospital with what was diagnosed as severe pneumonia, the "worst case the lung guy at the hospital had ever seen", to the point where they really didn't think I would live. Organs were shutting down. But within 12 hours on antibiotics I was already getting better. The doctors were amazed. (That post entry: http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2013/01/mostly-back-again.html)
I think they didn't quite realize what I likely had!
When we had lost electricity for so long after Hurricane Sandy, and then got hit with a Nor'easter which dropped temperatures below freezing. With no power I had tried to keep warm by boiling water constantly on the gas stove, and by filling both bathtubs with hot water. The house was filled with warm steam.
From an article about illness caused by cooling towers in NYC, "A type of severe pneumonia, Legionnaires' disease -- which was named after an outbreak during a 1976 meeting of the American Legion in Philadelphia -- is not spread from person to person but by breathing in mist with the organisms. Outbreaks usually occur in the summer."
"By breathing in mist with the organisms..." What you want to bet I had Legionnaires?
Legionnaires usually develops within 10 days of exposure. If it was Legionnaires, and if it was due to my breathing all that steam, I must have been fighting it off for a good six weeks before I couldn't fight it any more. I do know that I was getting progressively weaker all through November and December. I thought at the time it was just age and kidneys catching up with me, plus that I am very sensitive to molds, and with all the houses and mountains of household goods rotting away all around us from Sandy flooding, I thought that's what it was.
Interesting. Maybe if not for the mold I could have eventually fought it off.
Even more interesting, the folks most at risk of death are older people, smokers, and those with weak immune systems (like from kidney problems or diabetes). Boom, boom, and boomity-boom-boom.
I must be in better shape than I thought.
.
I think they didn't quite realize what I likely had!
When we had lost electricity for so long after Hurricane Sandy, and then got hit with a Nor'easter which dropped temperatures below freezing. With no power I had tried to keep warm by boiling water constantly on the gas stove, and by filling both bathtubs with hot water. The house was filled with warm steam.
From an article about illness caused by cooling towers in NYC, "A type of severe pneumonia, Legionnaires' disease -- which was named after an outbreak during a 1976 meeting of the American Legion in Philadelphia -- is not spread from person to person but by breathing in mist with the organisms. Outbreaks usually occur in the summer."
"By breathing in mist with the organisms..." What you want to bet I had Legionnaires?
Legionnaires usually develops within 10 days of exposure. If it was Legionnaires, and if it was due to my breathing all that steam, I must have been fighting it off for a good six weeks before I couldn't fight it any more. I do know that I was getting progressively weaker all through November and December. I thought at the time it was just age and kidneys catching up with me, plus that I am very sensitive to molds, and with all the houses and mountains of household goods rotting away all around us from Sandy flooding, I thought that's what it was.
Interesting. Maybe if not for the mold I could have eventually fought it off.
Even more interesting, the folks most at risk of death are older people, smokers, and those with weak immune systems (like from kidney problems or diabetes). Boom, boom, and boomity-boom-boom.
I must be in better shape than I thought.
.
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