When we spent our winters in Texas, we often danced to this song. As I recall, it was an upbeat excuse for calling off work. (You know, “I’m sick!”)
Well, ten days ago I met his first cousin,”Coughin’ ’Pneumonia and the Sleepin’ Thru Flu”! He is definitely not an upbeat kind of a dude! He is invisible and attacks you unseen. Although he (or she or it, depending upon your personal image of the gender of the flu!) is spread from one person to another. But nobody ever told me, “Hey, I just gave you the pneumonia and the flu!” They just let me wait ten to fourteen days to wake up one morning achy, feverish, and coughing my painful head off.
I couldn’t see this internal misery-maker coming and I can’t see that bum roaming around inside my body creating pain in everything he touches. Now it’s my head; now it’s my back. My shoulders, knees and hips feel as if they have been beaten on.
Finally, that pain-causing invader reached my lungs, already sick of scarring, and the coughing began. First, a bothersome tickle in my throat; then a hack from the lungs. Deeper and harder grows the cough until it feels as if that invader of my inner space gathered up all the breath I had left in my lungs and rolls it into a ball. That Flumonia Maker then flung it out of my mouth at the opposite side of the room! So, unable to breathe and too weak to cough, I fell into an exhausted sleep!
Hours later I woke up and discovered that sleep was exactly what I needed! It gave me the strength I needed to ask for some help. I knew that an antibiotic would be the only way to break this beast’s hold on my breathing. And so it was, but it took my pharmaceutical savior several days to completely deliver me from this respiratory torture!
I am grateful to be feeling a little better, but I have an important favor to ask of you: “Please, please, keep your flu and pneumonia to yourself!”
(NOTE: Have you had your flu shot yet this year?)
9 Dec 2019 - mshr
