Rockin' Pneumonia

[Crazycat]

I'm posting this as much for entertainment as informational purposes.


This past weekend I had to work playing music at a club in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; half-deaf, with headaches, double vision and with a crippling fever, body aches and pneumonia. Add to this the triple jeopardy of having contracted MRSA (a deadly antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria)  while in the hospital and things get real interesting! MRSA-related infections are usually what take people out in the form of pneumonia when they are in an already weakened state.
 
I felt myself becoming ill days before leaving for the gig. At first I attributed the wheezing I was having to the onset of spring that usually runs from late April through mid-June. The blooming lilacs have always been a gauge of this period for me like a sign of death (when the flowers bloom in the spring tra la!). This condition would most often be treated and snuffed-out immediately with a shot or two from an Albuteral inhaler. After a day or two of this not letting-up at all, I began to worry. What would ordinarily be seen as a minor allergic irritation was beginning to blossom into a full-blown chest cold or bronchial infection. Another thing that alarmed me was that head colds and flu infections usually begin in the sinuses or throat and work their way down into the lungs. This was the first time in my experience that the virus was starting and being strictly confined to the lungs. While I knew on an intuitive level that this was most likely pneumonia, I couldn't understand how someone like me would be getting it. I don't smoke or drink, I eat well and get plenty of sleep, I've been jogging 4-5 miles daily for the past ten years, I weight train and have been bench pressing (this strengthens the lungs enormously) for at least thirty years straight and I don't mix with many people. Also, if I had by chance encountered someone who had been infected—as most of us brush up against thousands of germs and microbes on a daily basis—shouldn't my immunity be strong enough to stave it off like it does virtually everything else? After all, I had survived three mammoth surgeries for a shunt (which had to be done twice because it had somehow become dislodged) and a 15.5 hour brain tumor resection and had sunk to the weakest I'd ever been in my life after five weeks in the hospital when I contracted the MRSA. Even then, as weak as I was, my immunity was still strong enough to ward-off a bout with pneumonia.
 
 After having booked the date months in advance and securing accommodations at a reasonable price the week before, It took over a day and a half to pack and get all the necessary gear together for the trip and this having to be done while becoming increasingly ill. Needless to say, I was dragging Friday morning—the day of departure—not having slept the night before due to convulsive and painful coughing. The plan was to drive to another band member's house, transfer my gear into his van and drive up together, splitting expenses. With his wife coming along with us, my place was to be on a couple of cushions placed on the floor of the vehicle.
 
By Saturday, I realized that I had probably been running a fever for three days straight; my lungs raw and burning from coughing; my whole body aching with malaise. Early Saturday morning, just before sunrise, I either saw a ghost or I had started to become delusional from the constant fever. I saw a shadow move across the doorway of my bedroom that triggered a fit of chills and shivering. In fact, here it is Tuesday, I've since been to my doctor, diagnosed, prescribed the necessary meds ($140 cost for ten antibiotic pills without insurance which I fortunately do have) and I still have a fever, although it is intermittent with doses of Ibuprofen which temporarily break it with fits of profuse sweating.
 
I had incredibly short dreams that were as vivid as they were profound:
 
In the realm of plasmic, mutating thought and imagery. Vision of musical ideas spontaneously erupting into material form with symmetrical and harmonic structure; then disintegrating and reforming with infinite variation. Seeing reality, thought and idea as being amorphous, transmutating and malleable substance; or in this case, a blob held within my hands. After holding this “thought� in my hands and watching it mutate into an inexpressible variety of forms, it then transposes itself telepathically into my mind in the form of the letter “P�.
 
A huge, open field. The sun is shining down on a group of children in the center of the field who have joined hands and are running around in a circle while singing or chanting. The song they are singing is striking and melodious. This scene is witnessed from above and from a distance. Especially noteworthy is how dwarfed the children are against the lush and sweeping vista of the field, with the gigantic, shining, yellow sphere of the sun above

 I am in what appears to be a Civil War battle. I remember holding a dead comrade in my arms. He is a Confederate soldier and has received a massive wound to the back of his head. I was kneeling down, holding his upper body up in a sitting position but at an inclined angle. His head limply hung backward; his mouth, wide open, agasp; his unseeing eyes, staring vacantly into the sky. I noticed we were at the edge of a clear pool of water. I then gently lowered his torso until the back of his head touched the surface of the water and watched a cloud of blood fan out across the pool.

 Ancient civilization. Pyramids; smooth and stepped. Amazing masonry and architecture. A plaza with hordes of wretched and bedraggled people. There’s a woman holding a naked infant. It begins to defecate. People gather around with cupped hands to catch the excrement as it falls.

 At dinner banquet in a huge, manorial setting. A long, wooden table; decorative, sumptuous and bountiful. There is a ritual of changing the tablecloth in-between courses. Impressions of England. Later on, looking through clothing racks at fur coats.

 At this point, the "other side" is beginning to look like quite an interesting place! I began to understand why the great Civil War General Stonewall Jackson's last words (while dying from pneumonia) were: "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."

 In spite of everything we played extremely well and had a good time doing so, planting the seeds for a future relationship with the venue. One of the staff who works there regularly and gets to see every band that plays there reported to us that we were the tightest group he'd seen there yet.
 
We planned on packing-up and driving home after the gig Saturday night in order to save the money we would have spent on renting the cabin for another day. It was a long day and night.
 
I was home by 5 AM Sunday morning. Sunday I knew that it had to be pneumonia and called for an appointment first thing Monday morning. I was right. I was amused to find myself sounding exactly like Clint Eastwood in "Heartbreak Ridge" when trying to speak during an asthma spasm.
 
Sunday night the cough seemed to break—in other words, it didn't hurt to cough anymore. I decided to go for broke and blow-out all the mucous and fluid that had been accumulating in my lungs. It was like exorcising a demon; convulsive coughing so deep, guttural and violent you'd expect to see lungs, heart and esophagus blown-out and flapping like an inverted window shade (like something in an old Merry Melodies cartoon) along with gelatinous strands of yellow and green mucous. I sat there saying "Okay, this is it, let er' rip" and braced myself: BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!! GGGGGGGGGGgggggggggggaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkk!!!!................SSSSssssssssssssskkkkkkkkkkkkkkllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrsssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
(*sound bites compliments of Don Martin Dept., Mad Magazine)
 
This went on for at least fifteen minutes straight and would reoccur at regular intervals, spitting copious globs of green and rust-colored slime into a large plastic cup and gradually filling it halfway through the course of the night. I wretched myself into a state of complete exhaustion and fell asleep. As exhausted as I was, I'd be snapped out of my short sleep coma after a minute or two to start the process of clearing my lungs out all over again. My breathing felt squishy and bubbly, as if my thorax and diaphragm was a huge sodden sponge and sounded wet and wheezy like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist"—sort of like a barnyard of steers with bad sleep apnea.
 
Monday I felt as if I have gone 15 rounds in a prize fight from the convulsive coughing. This thing may be kicking my ass, but it is not going to win because I'm strong enough to fight it off.
 
 It was then that I began to see how dangerous pneumonia can be to a person. The only reason that I was still walking around and functional was because I'd taken such good care of myself over the years. I can't imagine what this would be like for a person that has spent his/her whole life charbroiling their lung tissue from smoking and that has never done anything substantial in the way of exercise—bye bye.
You can see how and why pneumonia kills so many. The scary thing is that if someone like me can get it like that seemingly out of nowhere and for no good apparent reason, then anybody can get it. Nothing is sacred. The only thing you can do is to try to stay as healthy and strong as long as you can throughout your life to fight it off.. That is the real "money in the bank".
 
As miserable and dangerous as any form of pneumonia can be, there are strains that make what I have look like a glorified chest cold.
 
What happened to Muppet creator Jim Henson is a good case-in-point. Henson contracted a form of bacterial pneumonia caused by a streptococcus bacteria, which led to a total assault of strep bacteria throughout his entire body, resulting in organ failure from Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome, all within the course of twelve days—sort of like "invasion of the body snatchers" but for real. It started out with common flu symptoms: sore throat and fatigue to trouble breathing and coughing-up blood eleven days later to irreversible organ failure. By the time he went to a hospital on the twelfth day it was too late.
 
The difference between these strains is sometimes expressed when referring to pneumonia as either "walking"—as in the more common and easier treated form that I have—or "galloping"—as in the rapidly developing, virulent, take-no-prisoners version that killed Jim Henson.
 
The good news is that I am rapidly recovering. Tonight was my third dosage of the new super antibiotic "Levaquin" of the ten that must be taken. For the first time in close to a week I could lay down, relax and drift-off to sleep uninterrupted without being jolted into gacking-up mucous.
I went into this neat dream that I was this balloon-like creature the consistency of a beanbag dancing around in a room with this colorful oriental carpet, weightlessly pirouetting and somersaulting to Johnny Winter's full-tilt boogie tune "You're Humbuggin' Me". It was beautiful.
 
Upon awakening, I could both feel and hear my sinus and bronchial passages expanding and crackling open as the infection was being attacked and vaporized by the drug.

[cin605]

Holy ^$&^!
let me know when your in N.H. again i will come out to see you,Love rock!

[Sue]

Yeah, Holy $#% is right!    The dreams were really interesting.  Maybe you had your own intense past life regression going on there.  Wowzer!

So glad you survived.

Sue in Vancouver, USA

[Crazycat]

Thanks!

 I have another tale of woe from New Year's Eve. You wouldn't believe what I went through that night!

[Crazycat]

The things that I've suffered in the name of playing music.


 
Here is an account of how I spent this past New Year's Eve...

I know it's long but I think you'll find it entertaining.

Here's how my day and night went. I knew it was going to be tough having to deal with a bad snowstorm we had that day but there were other problems that came up that I just hadn't bargained for.

A few days before I began to have the symptoms of a urinary tract infection. I thought by just drinking cranberry juice it would snuff it out. I was wrong. Just when it seemed to ease-up and go away it would come back a little worse. By the day before, I knew that if I didn't begin a treatment with antibiotics right away, I'd be in dire straits throughout the gig. I had been so uncomfortable the night before I barely got two hours of sleep.

Just before excavating my van out of the driveway, I put a call in to my doctor's office (closed at that time), hoping that the referral service would call the doctor who would then call me and fax-in a few prescriptions—which he did right away. The guy who was fielding the calls was a clueless idiot. First he puts me on hold for five minutes. When he finally gets on the phone he tells me "We don't fill prescriptions after hours". Having a hard time believing what I was hearing, he then says to me, "Go to the pharmacy and see what they can do for you". Huh?? I calmly explain the process to him; in effect, telling him how to do his job. He then says (like it's too much of an effort and will only be a waste of time), "Okay.....I'll call the doctor but......." The phone rings less than five minutes later and it's my doctor. I explain the situation to him and he prescribes the needed meds, only asking that I make an appointment to see him on Friday. No problem. If I had listened to that idiot at the referral service I would have been doomed—which I was anyway, urinary tract infection or not. Let's put it this way: it would have made an almost impossible situation even worse.

Before setting out for the gig and already sick and exhausted from shoveling and general malaise from the UTI, I stopped at CVS to pick-up the meds. I crawled up to Manchester like a German Panzer tank en route to Stalingrad in the Russian tundra with little heat in the van and no windshield washer, putting additional strain on my eyes which were already afflicted with constant double vision, having to view the road through a smeared coating of dirt and ice. Also, the front left caliper has a tendency to lock-up on the wheel, making it pull to the right and creating great heat on the tire and wheel well. This has been an on-going problem for some time as I've had every brake component replaced several times (under warranty) to no avail.

It took me an hour and a half to get to the club. The sidewalk in front of the club was covered with drifting and swirling eddies of snow; the wind, gale force with a wind chill that felt like minus 20. We loaded the gear in like indentured and vapid Himalayan Sherpas, fighting the frigid, cutting wind every second we were exposed to the open air.

The first blow dealt to us was the insult of them trying to reneg on the agreed amount of money they were to pay us. While this may be considered standard practice in the sleazy underbelly world of nightclubdom, to be confronted with this after everything that I'd already suffered up to that point was insult to injury.

The gig turned-out to be the absolute worst New Year's Eve gig I've ever played in my life, drawing a comparative handful of people in a room that is usually injection molded with flesh; but the money was great and at that point, that's all I really cared about. The weather was that bad. Bad enough to keep even local people indoors on New Year's Eve no less, even after they'd already purchased tickets to attend.

Now the fun part. After packing-up I go outside to start the van and it won't turn over. It's a diesel and it's way too cold for it to not have been plugged-in and to not have had a special additive in the fuel to keep it fluid—diesel fuel tends to gel in extreme cold. It's after 1:00 am; the club is closing down and unceremoniously telling us to pack-up and leave. I call AAA on their land line and it takes about fifteen minutes for someone to field my call. They send someone with a flatbed truck that tries to jump-start the van to no avail. He says that he can't tow it to Mass because he has to stay local but that he'll try to find someone who can and that he'll call me. He never does. By now, we're out of the warmth of the room and the access to a land line—the charge on my phone is starting to run low along with the minutes—sitting ducks in the middle of ****sville, NH.

At this moment though, it occurs to me that it is ironic that the horrible weather is actually our friend in this regard, keeping any lowlife, bottom-feeding thieves dormant like insects. One of the guys vows to hang with me through the ordeal and not leave me alone while the other two hapless and pathetic hyenas pack-up and leave without the slightest inquiry or consideration. So, there I am, practically left for dead in an Arctic climate and running a mild fever even though I booked the date and am virtually carrying the whole ball of wax on my back like a dung beetle. Moments like this tend to leave you with a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling—or maybe it was just that mild fever I had.

The drummer's vehicle, a Saturn sedan, was packed to the gills with his gear, requiring that everything be rearranged to make room for me to sit in the passenger seat. While he is doing this, all I can do is stand there looking-on freezing to death. At that moment a gust of wind whipped-up and I began to convulse with uncontrollable shivering; the kind that you get when you're sick with a nasty flu virus that no amount of applied warmth or blankets can stop. I knew that I was in serious trouble. Finally the seat was cleared and I climbed into the vehicle, our home for the next three hours. It took about ten minutes or so for the shivering to subside after which, I called AAA again only to be put on hold for close to another half-an-hour. I hung-up, knowing that I was going to kill the cell phone fast and couldn't afford to hang on the phone like that again.

I needed to have access to a land line for a situation like this so I called my girlfriend in Florida (at 3:30 am), providing her with all the AAA information so that she could spend as much time needed on the phone to get results—it was the only way. It took her forty minutes on hold to finally talk to someone. This made me think that AAA was inundated with service calls due to the weather. We'd probably still be there waiting long after sunrise.

Having sat in the car for close to two hours now, I had to relieve myself. There was an alleyway between two tenement buildings that I could duck into. As soon as I got out of the car the wind hit me and I began to convulse with shivering again. I ran into the alley hoping that it would provide some cover from the wind but the way it was positioned, the wind was shooting through it like a ravine of death. I couldn't do it and ran back to the car before I succumbed to exposure. Sitting in that car was like sitting in a two-man Gemini space capsule from the '60s. It was so cold outside that the drummer carried a plastic urinal—the kind they have in hospitals—and would relieve himself in that before having to get out of the vehicle. I couldn't believe the situation we were in. All I could do was gaze out the frosted window and quietly moan, "I just wanna go home". It was actually more like Apollo 13.

At 4:15 or so, my girlfriend calls me back saying that she finally contacted someone and laid it on heavy: that not only was I marooned in a hostile environment with a van-full of expensive gear but that I was also ill.

The people that I had initially contacted had tried to tell me that towing me home to Mass—less than forty miles away—was out of their jurisdiction (when I had AAA plus service which covers up to 100 miles for a tow) and had also dropped the ball as well as botching the case number they had assigned me—more incompetence like that guy at the physician's referral service earlier that day. This new person tells her that they'll send someone but how long it would take he couldn't say. My girlfriend told me to wait for another half-an-hour before calling her back so that she, in turn, could check back with them. When that time came I dialed her number only to be flashed a message saying that I had exhausted my cell minutes. Our only option at that point was to leave the van unattended (still a scary prospect in that neighborhood even with the weather being what it was) and find a 24-hour convenience store that sold cell phone minutes.

Not one minute after the phone died I looked up and the flatbed rolled-up along side of us. We were saved! An act of mercy orchestrated from over one-thousand miles away in Florida no less.

When I got home got home at 5:45 am my cats were waiting for me. I reached in my pocket and pulled-out a big wad of cash and said to them, "Now we can eat!" Mission accomplished.

I had been so affected by the cold that I had bizarre, Daliesque dreams that morning. I dreamt of these spherical beings that were very dense and inorganic in nature that exist in a world of absolute zero; so cold that all molecular motion has been completely arrested.

I guess it could have been worse.....

What especially bothered me about this experience—and still does—is that virtually anyone else in any profession you can think of would have had the option of either calling in sick—which I most certainly was—and/or taking a personal day off due to inclement weather—with pay no less. Yet, there I was: sick with a fever, confronted with having to travel a long distance in dangerously bad weather, already impaired from the Acoustic Neuroma, half-deaf with double vision and equilibrium problems, and I have to thanklessly risk life and limb to tread the abyss to a horrible, godforsaken place to play music for a bunch of people that I ordinarily wouldn't want to even walk on the same side of the street as. What a life! Strange. Risking life and limb so as to hold court for a bunch of stupid drunks. Musicians seemingly are duty-bound to debauchery.

This experience, being as traumatic as it was, also marked the beginning of a turning point for me. True, I've hated the business and many of the characters associated with it for a long time, but this fiasco signified the beginning of the end for me in no uncertain terms.

I was so stultified by what happened I didn't leave my house for most of the winter.

Thanks for reading......Paul

[saralynn143]

Some days are like that. Even in Australia.

Sara

[Crazycat]

Australia?

I was there just last night, walking around some neighborhood in Melbourne! I was using Google Maps. It takes you down to the street level. Have you tried it?

[stoneaxe]

So other than that how was the weekend and new years?....

I've had dreams like that but they were way back in my youth...during what I can remember of the 70's...and maybe the occasional flashback since then..

Have you ever considered writing Paul? You have the gift.

Bob

[Crazycat]

Thanks Bob!

  People have been telling me that since I was a kid. I'm getting into it more as I'm getting older. I'd been especially torn between art and music most of my life but I've always been a good writer. Having both my hearing and left-hand dexterity sabotaged by the A.N. has pushed me more in the direction of writing as a medium of self-expression. In that regard it may have been a blessing in disguise? How's that for a cushy, turn-it-around rationalization? I'm a living, breathing, walking amalgam of defense mechanisms. I'm just crawling with clues! Either that or "cluelessness".

But thanks again for the compliment!

Paul

[Larry]

Man,

There's a show on tele called the Twilight Zone. I reckon, you should give your story to them and get some movie rights or something. When you do things, you sure do them properly!

Having had pneumonia, it aint fun so I can empathise what you went through. Glad its all behind ya now.

Laz

[Crazycat]

Thanks Laz!

 

[HeadCase2]

Crazycat,
  Thank you [Dr. Leary] for all the great imagery.   Sorry to hear about your travails.   But I have to admit that I enjoyed hearing the stories.  Please go ahead and write the book!  Let me be the first to reguest a signed copy.
   After playing in a blues band in Dallas for a while, I knew that the musician's life was not for me.   Dealing with sleazy bar owners and promoters just didn't seem worth it.  Although I still miss the high of having a gig go well.
Regards,
  Rob

[cin605]

Wow again!Those stories are amazing.You have had more to say than i have heard from everybody i have seen in the last 6months ..at least!

[yardtick]

Can't wait for chapter two, with the Boogie Woogie Flu   

Anne Marie

[Crazycat]

Thanks!

Rob, I knew you'd appreciate it being a musician yourself.

Let me see what else I can come up with!