On the upswing

Why I have been off the grid for the past few days?

It's a simple explanation, actually.

I started getting a sort throat on Tuesday. on Thursday, severe congestion set in. On Friday, I began to lose my voice while we flew to Washington. On Saturday, it was pretty much gone, replaced by a drop-dead perfect imitation of Harvey Fierstein.

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of seeing our USAir flights cancelled, and a re-routing which, in the end, would have stranded us in Charlotte overnight Sunday. So, we went to the Hertz desk and were able to rent an Impala to DRIVE from Reagan Airport back home. We arrived around 1:30 in the morning, or about nine hours earlier than we would have arrived had we flown.

Monday saw me go into work and battle all day while feeling awful, as I could no longer cough up any congestion and I had to do work and finish a paper for a 4:30 class (which I finished at 3:43). I made it to class, only to be interrupted halfway through by one helluva coughing streak that saw me have to leave my early class, cancel out of my second class, and head to Piedmont Hospital.

Bottom line: I had a virus which has been going around a lot of people (pretty common) but because of my stress levels and lack of sleep thanks to home, I also had inflammation and a bacterial infection in my lungs.

I had X-rays taken, and it was NOT bacterial pneumonia - but if I had let it go another day or two, it would have probably become such.

(The X-Rays to the right are not mine. I don't have the copies.)

I came back home last night, armed with steroids and antibiotics, and I am back at work today I was very glad to see the kids last night, and hopefully, I can be back to decent shape to spend some quality time with them soon when I'm not sleeping on the couch (a very diffiult situation when trying to deal with everything else.)

It has been a very rough first quarter of the year, so hopefully the second quarter can get off to a promising start as well. I did lose 5 pounds over the last month - but another 55 remain. Only 28 days of classes remain as well. Then...who knows?