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 February whodunit

By Andy Young

Maybe it’s my imagination, but even though I don’t care much for winter, it seems like February goes by far more quickly than any other month on the calendar.

Maybe it’s because of the increasing daylight that comes with each 24-hour passage of time. Another possibility, at least for teachers like me: the month contains a weeklong school vacation. Or there could be a more obvious explanation, like February having fewer actual days than any of the other 11 months, even during a leap year.

Coincidentally, I was born in early February, and this year one of the best gifts I received came the night before my actual birthday, when I (and presumably a couple hundred other faculty and staff in my school district) received a text message from the superintendent explaining that due to anticipated inclement weather, there would be no school in RSU 21 the next day. Woo-hoo! The only thing better than having a birthday snow day in February is knowing ahead of time that you’re going to have one! I joyously shut off my alarm and slept in until nearly 5:30 the next morning. And when I finally did become conscious, I did so with a smile, imagining that I now know for certain what life for the idle rich must be like.

Nothing was falling from the sky when I got up and for a brief moment, I thought the superintendent was doomed to getting pilloried on social media by the district’s perpetual complainers, but fortunately for her snow began falling right when the forecasters had said it would, and by noon there was no question she had made the right call.

One drawback to having a snow day when one’s children have moved away: snow removal becomes a one-person job. And to do that efficiently and lessen the chance of pulling one of my few remaining muscles, my shovel and I go out every two hours or so. At about 3 p.m. I cleared four inches of fluffy white flakes off the driveway, but knew I’d have to return later to finish the job. However, I didn’t think it would be too tough, given the slackening rate at which the snow was falling.

By 7 p.m. the storm was over, but another inch or two needed clearing, and of course there’d be the wall of cinder-block-sized ice chunks the town plow inevitably leaves at the foot of the driveway as well.

But when I got to the end of my driveway there wasn’t any snow. However, there was evidence that someone equipped with a machine had been there, and had cleared everything away for me.

Elated, I raced inside and began pounding out a “thank you” text message to my neighbor Cris, who I’ve caught in the past doing covert good deeds. But then it suddenly occurred to me: what if I were thanking the wrong person? Suppose the driveway-clearer had been Will, who lives across the street and is also prone to committing random acts of kindness? Or maybe it was Dan, the new neighbor with the big snow-throwing tractor. Then again, it could have been Mrs. A, or Angela, or one of Angela’s energetic children, or some other neighborhood kid(s). Who knew?

Then it hit me: the best birthday present of all was realizing there are too many plausible suspects living near me to know for certain who the Good Samaritan was!

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving, but events like the one that occurred on my birthday help me remember that there’s no need to wait for November to feel (and express) sincere gratitude. <