It was the last week of March when I started feeling sick. I woke up in a puddle of sweat and I was like, whoa, what’s going on here? I don’t feel too good. I was very, very weak. I had a terrible headache and I was very hot. My temperature was 103.
The next day I was having chills; the body aches were the worst. I felt the pain come from my chest and go to my back. The act of breathing was horrible. By then I couldn’t get out of bed and I didn’t want to walk. I hardly ate. I drank a lot of tea.
They told me not to take anything but Tylenol. Then the coughing started getting really bad. So I started taking an over-the-counter cough suppressant and then they gave me a Z-Pak.
For a week the symptoms were about the same until my breathing and coughing got even worse. I woke up, I was yellow and decided to go to the E.R. because I couldn’t breath. They put me on oxygen to get my levels back. They did a chest x-ray. I ended up having pneumonia. They did blood work, urine tests, everything like that, just to make sure everything was OK. And they sent me on my way.
A couple of days after I left the hospital and I was not jaundiced anymore. The doctor said my lungs took a beating and that it would take a couple months to heal. I was sick for a total of 48 days. Never, ever have I been sick like that before, it felt like it was literally attacking your body.