[1sicklx]

History

Well, I guess the best place to start is with a little history to set the stage. Four years ago at Christmas, on a trip from Minneapolis to Indianapolis in a flying Petri dish (commonly referred to as a commercial airliner), I caught “THE cold from hell”. It went on for several months and never really went away. This lead to what seemed to be a relentless cycle of sinus and upper respiratory infections – I'd get sick, then I'd get somewhat better (but never well), then I'd get sick all over again.


I think the best example is for those who have seen me at track events or at the shop with what had become my signature cough. Some came to refer to it as “The Kenny Cough”. Not exactly what I want to be known for.
But never the less, it was the continual hard coughing that was the constant as the infections came and went. The problem is that I was far too busy to be sick, I didn't have time for it so I tolerated the cough, took lots of pills and ignored the doctor's recommendations that I take some time off to get well.


In the Spring of 2004 the coughing became really bad and I felt like crap. I think it was after a NASA track event at Putnam Park I was in so much pain that I went to the ER to have them x-ray my chest to see if I cracked a rib from the violent coughing. Well the good news was no cracked rib – BUT – my lungs looked like there was a blizzard inside. Yikes!!! I was quickly spirited down for a CT Scan for a more detailed look. The ER doc came back gave me a handful of pills for the pain and told me get to your doctor right away.


In the couple of days it took to get organized with my pulmonary doc I was getting worse and worse. He took me straight into the hospital for an emergency bronchoscope to get a piece of the stuff (they refer to them as infiltrates) in my lungs for a culture. It's about that time that my lungs decided that they had enough of this crap, and shut down in protest, and just plain stalled, as in I stopped breathing. Apparently this created a bit of a stir with the attending medical staff, as they frantically worked to get me fired back up again, or so I was told when I awoke later in a room upstairs with the commensurate I.V. tubes, oxygen and machines beeping and booping.


Apparently, I had contracted an extremely rare fungal pneumonia of which there were only a handful of cases ever recorded. (You know my mother always told me that I was one in a million but this is a hell of a way to prove her right). My pulmonary Doc immediately pulled in a very aggressive Infectious Disease Doc who relying on his experience and gut to shoot from the hip with some brand new, very powerful and stupidly expensive drugs, as this was something he had never seen before. We never let anybody know just how serious this was at the time. After a week or so in the hospital, true to form (and of course, against doctor's orders and wife's wishes) I was back at work on a Monday just two days after busting out of the hospital.


I discovered that fungal infections in the lungs are a real bitch as it took well over six month of intense medication therapy to clear it up, but this never completely eradication my ever faithful and familiar cough. Then the cycle of sinus/respiratory infections began all over again, arg!