Insight: Two Weeks on Death’s Doorstep

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

It began innocently enough with a cough as we approached mid-February and ended up being two of the worst weeks of my life from a health perspective.

This shows a sampling of some of the medications that were
used by Ed Pierce to overcome pneumonia in both lungs
during the last two weeks of February.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE   

Back around Thanksgiving last fall, I was suffering from some sort of viral infection that persisted for days and was eventually conquered by my doctor prescribing an effective five-day antibiotic treatment. I felt good afterward and got through Christmas and New Year’s and on into January without further illness.

But around Feb. 10, I started to develop a cough and treated it with cough syrup and taking a Nyquil pill at bedtime. Within three or four days I seemed better and was on the mend when I had my annual physical with my doctor on Valentine’s Day.

He listened with a stethoscope to my lungs and said whatever I had been experiencing earlier that week had cleared up because he couldn’t hear anything in there.

That evening my wife and I went out to a restaurant for a meal and the following day we attended a funeral at a local church for a friend who had passed away. I noticed that I had the sniffles at the church, but they didn’t seem excessive or anything out of the ordinary.

The next morning, Sunday, Feb. 16, it began to snow heavily, and both my wife and I worked outside clearing the driveway of ice and snow. I was using my snowblower and the snow was so fine as it scattered around, I could barely see a few feet in front of my face.

Then it began to rain lightly, and the moisture appeared to be frozen before it reached the ground. My coat, hat and gloves were soaked, but I had cleared the driveway of the snow.

My wife and I decided to return indoors but before we did that, as I was putting away the snowblower in the garage, I felt this weird type of chill travel from one end of my body to the other. When that has happened to me before, it’s a signal that I’m coming down with something.

By later that evening, I was in poor shape. My nose was running like a raging river, I had an uncontrollable cough, a sudden loss of appetite, and was experiencing a terrible headache. I took an extra Nyquil pill to try and regain some control of my health while I slept that night, but it didn’t work.

When I woke up on Monday, Feb. 17, I was sicker than a dog. I was still coughing, my nose was still running, and the headache was still there. But two new symptoms suddenly appeared. The first one was severe diarrhea and the second was that I could now hear the fluid building up in both of my lungs.

The pronounced wheezing was troublesome because it occurred every time that I took a breath in and then exhaled. It sounded like hitting a low note on an accordion or a moose in distress and was deeply concerning.

During all this time it was difficult to sleep through the night. I would doze off at some point but then wake myself up with a loud wheeze. I recall waking myself up one evening at 1, 2, 3 and 4 a.m. with my wheezing.

After realizing that my over-the-counter cold medicine wasn’t helping me, I called the doctor on Tuesday, Feb. 18. He was booked solid for the rest of the week, so my healthcare provider asked if I would be willing to see another doctor in the practice who had an appointment available that Thursday.

I agreed to make an appointment to see her. She examined me and after listening to my lungs with her stethoscope, she diagnosed me with Community Acquired Pneumonia. That means someone at one of the places I visited, either the restaurant or the funeral at the church, had been suffering from pneumonia and then spread it to me.

She prescribed a five-day course of antibiotics, the exact same medication that I had been prescribed over Thanksgiving, and she told me that if my pneumonia didn’t clear up by the end of the antibiotic treatment, she would prescribe another medication.

Throughout this entire ordeal, my wife wouldn’t let me go outdoors to work on the driveway when it snowed several times again and I wasn’t even allowed to take the dog outside. I felt absolutely useless.

By Day Five of the antibiotic treatment, my runny nose had stopped, my headache had subsided, and my diarrhea had gone away. But I was still coughing a great deal, and I could still hear pronounced wheezing coming from my lungs.

My doctor then prescribed a treatment for the next five days of taking two prednisone pills daily.

Those were aimed at clearing my lungs of the fluid and by the time that medication was finished, I felt better and began to think that I was on the road to recovery.

In looking back at the last two weeks of February, some irrefutable facts are hard to overlook.

When you’re old, it’s hard to ward off sickness, no matter how healthy you are. And you can’t fully appreciate good health until you become sick. <

Andy Young: A Toast to J.C. Martin

By Andy Young

Some time ago someone I trust told me that beginning every day with an eight-ounce glass of water was a good idea.  

Later another credible source informed me that adding a teaspoon of vinegar to that water before drinking it was even healthier. I’m guessing she knew what she was talking about, because water with vinegar in it tastes so nasty that it has to be exceptionally beneficial! Anyway, starting my morning with that particular potion has become a daily ritual for me.

Not every habit is healthy, though. During the 14 years I spent riding buses with professional baseball teams I couldn’t help noticing the number of players with a circular protrusion of about two inches in diameter in one of the rear pockets of their uniform pants.

The size and shape of the lump was familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why any ballplayer would carry a hockey puck with him, particularly since many of those sporting the round bulge were from places like Florida, Texas, and Venezuela, none of which are hockey hotbeds. It turned out, though, that those disc-shaped indentations were made not by vulcanized rubber discs, but by cans of snuff.

Reputable dental hygienists everywhere swear there is no nastier habit than chewing tobacco and/or dipping snuff. Many people consider sitting around a poker table surrounded by six men continuously spitting brown liquid into bottles that formerly contained soft drinks utterly repulsive.

However, it’s better than sitting in a room with even one cigarette smoker, whose vice fills the lungs of those around them with carcinogens. Some might find the continuous expectorations of dippers and chewers off-putting, but the fact is bystanders (or bysitters) don’t have to ingest their second-hand saliva.

One of the most popular brands of smokeless chewing tobacco is Skoal, which is a Danish word of Norse origin that today is most often used as a toast, often (ironically) to one’s health.

Toasting prior to quaffing reminds me of, well, drinking. And that makes me think of J.C. Martin, a major league baseball catcher who spent parts of 14 seasons with the Chicago White Sox, New York Mets, and Chicago Cubs. The five-game 1969 World Series took an aggregate total of 11 hours and 43 minutes to play, and while Martin appeared on the field for only one of those minutes, he played a huge role in the Mets defeating the favored Baltimore Orioles for the championship that year. And while I’d love to relate the details of J. C.’s incredible heroics here, the only people (both of them) still reading this who are interested in such things undoubtedly already know the story.

Anyway, when I was young and impressionable, I learned something fascinating about Mr. Martin while reading a baseball magazine. The article stated that he neither smoked nor drank, which I found both impressive and puzzling. I knew that not smoking was both wise and admirable, but not drinking? Surely that was a misprint.

Even at a single-digit age I assumed all humans needed to drink periodically if they wished to continue existing. After all, even the camel (AKA “The Ship of the Desert”) had to hydrate every couple of weeks or so. It was only much later on that I learned the difference between drinking and “drinking.” 

I wonder if J. C. Martin, who is now 85 years old, starts his days with a glass of water that contains a teaspoon of vinegar. I’d love to have a drink with the guy, and if I ever get the chance, I know exactly what I’ll say to him.

Skoal! <