‘Walking Pneumonia’

So my doctor just called, and he told me that the blood draw, my symptoms (illness not confined to the chest, but also in the head), and the bug’s apparent apathy towards penicillin indicated that I did indeed have the ‘other’ kind of pneumonia, the so called ‘mycoplasma pneumonia‘, sometimes called ‘walking pneumonia’ because ‘patients can sometimes continue to walk about whilst suffering from its symptoms’.  This is apparently one of the ‘atypical pneumonias‘.  This finding was supposedly in direct contrast to my x-ray, so minus one point to the x-ray interpreter.  Boo!

Yes, I am indeed capable of walking (slowly), so I drove myself to the nearest pharmacy, walked slowly in the door, and paid a whopping isk 3523/$30 for three whole pills of zithromax.  That’s twice the price I paid for 30 pills of penicillin!  Anyway, if I happen to be well next time I have to pick up a prescription, maybe I’ll call around and get the best price quote, but no, this is not the ‘get quotes on phone’-pneumonia so that didn’t happen.

So anyway.  Now I’m going to keep lying here in bed (this laptop is really living up to its name…) and wait for modern medicine to kick some evil bug-behinds.  Crossing my fingers that this is the one…

Still not up and about

I meant to blog last night, but when the time came, my ibuprofen wore off and the fever (oral: 38.2°C/100.8°F, which probably really means 38.7°C/101.7°F) and chills returned with a vengeance.   So I lay down for a night of fitful sleep, where my coughing woke me up periodically, and my throat and ears were sore.  This was ever so disappointing because just a few hours before, I’d thought to myself “Hey, I’m feeling slightly better!  I can fold some laundry!”, and then it was all downhill from there.

This morning my GP called me in for a quick lung-listen, and an ear-check.  Sure enough, he could see that the insides of my ears have been inflamed (one much worse than the other), so then he started thinking if I could have a type of bug that would benefit from a different drug than the one I’m taking (and seems to have done nothing whatsoever).  Apparently my lung x-ray did not suggest the ‘other’ bug, so he will wait on the results of a blood draw and then make up his mind as to what to do next.

Having left the doctor’s office, I drove to the tiny neighborhood store and walked around very slowly, gathering some fruits and dairy products into my cart.  I hope I didn’t infect the teller with anything.

Poor little Bjarki has been kept away from me all week, so as not to get infected.  Apparently he’s done quite well at his grandparents’ place, but he’s been sad over the apparent loss of not only his sister and dad, but also his mom.  Awwww.   But since I still haven’t had two fever-free days, I’m still considered contagious, and so I continue to order him away.  Tonight he will be with Finnur’s sister, Inga, and tomorrow our friends, Adda and Halli, will take him under their wings.  I remain eternally grateful as always.