Monday, November 18, 2019

Pneumonia Sucks

So the last few weeks of school are always super busy at a college.  Between the end of classes and finals, students and professors seem to lose their minds.  This is a critical time in an academic library.  We are the quiet study space and the group study space and defacto tutors in all subjects.  The number one thing I do is help students write papers and research for those papers. 

Now I work at an HBCU which also has the added hype of homecoming.  My HBCU does not have a football team so homecoming is pretty late in the semester since we wait for basketball to start.  This year's homecoming was the last week of October.  At an HBCU, all of the alumni come back to campus.  At Hollins, we had a reunion and it is always targeted a few special class years.  Homecoming is everybody comes back.  It is fun.  It is exhausting.  I opened the library this year for the first time in about 5 years so a "grand opening" was planned. 

On Monday of homecoming, I was feeling awful.  I didn't have any help for my entire shift and I was hopping from project to project.  On top of the grand opening, I was scheduled to present to the Board of Trustees about the library and a couple of other projects on my plate.  By the time I left that Monday, I told my evening assistant that I would see her tomorrow unless I ran a fever.  I got up Tuesday morning running a fever. 

Mind you at my house, we were just finishing a long string of illness starting with Gymgirl with a random tonsillitis infection, moving to my dad with shingles, that lead directly to Baby Lala getting chickenpox.  Between the fever, body aches, and general fatigue, my husband took me to one of those urgent care places for a flu test.  Never agree to a flu test; it feels like they are trying to scrape your eyeballs.  So I survived the flu test, which was negative but the PA did not like the sound in my chest.  After only my second x-ray ever, he declared I had pneumonia.  I would not be allowed to return to work for the Board presentation but if I was feeling better and took all of my meds, I could attend my grand opening.

While I was at home, I had to be in quarantine.  Baby Lala was still recovering from chickenpox and my dad from shingles on top of still recovering from cancer treatment.  So we had 2 people that we absolutely could not afford to allow to get sick. So I was stuck in my room, listening to Baby Lala crying for me and coughing up a lung or lung butter as the old folks like to say.

I returned to work for my grand opening and I was very tired afterward.  It took me all weekend to recover from 1 day's work.  I had planned to take a day off the following week before I got sick since I knew I would be covering weekend hours for finals.  By the time I had my day off, I was so tired.  Even this last week, I found myself exhausted.  I'm just tired all of the time.  I have had to use a rescue inhaler a couple of times to open up my breathing. 

Needless to say, I'm not running.  I miss running.  Between extended library hours and pneumonia, I haven't been able to see anyone outside of work and my house.  I miss my friends; not that I really have many (or any depending on the day) I do like to leave the house.  I'm 18 days released from quarantine and still tired.  The recovery is really kicking my ass.  I'm not used to sitting.  Yes, I get tired but that is usually from running or running around all day.  I want to run.  I need to destress.  All in all pneumonia and pneumonia recovery sucks.  Here's hoping that you and yours are doing well!




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