How to nurse yourself through pneumonia at home

[Aquaria]

16. Cool air humidifier

Make sure it's by where you will be, sleeping or awake, and the stream pointed to come right at you. It will really help.

I can vouch for sitting up. Anytime I laid down, I felt like I was suffocating. So I spent most of my illness sitting up. With the right arrangement of pillows, I was even able to rest on my side sitting up. I was also lucky that I have skylights in my living room. I'd go out there when I couldn't stand looking at my bedroom walls anymore, so I got plenty of natural light.

I liked having a cool room, in the mid 60s, but with plenty of blankets to keep me warm. I seemed to breathe better with the air at that temperature than at 70 or above. But other people may feel differently about it.

Fewer lung irritants = Good. So if you don't have a good HEPA air filter, get one. For people with carpets or rugs: Whatever room you're in, have someone dust and vacuum your other hangout spot every day, if possible. And then when you go to the living room or wherever for the change of pace, dust and vacuum the other room. No perfumes or air fresheners or any of that. My husband used Lysol spray to disinfect bedding or the sofa right after I left a room. By the time I was ready to go back, the smell would be gone. Then he could spray down where I'd left.

It goes without saying to avoid all smoke, whether it's lighting up your fireplace, your husband running the grill on the patio, burnt food or typical tobacco or weed smoke. Smoke of any kind will make everything worse. My husband had to ask the neighbors not to barbecue until I was better, and a friend who was crashing at our place at the time had to stop eating toast, because he likes it just this side of burnt. It took only one episode of each for me to be hacking worse than I already was.

And no cough medicine, unless your doctor advises it. Coughing gets the crap out of your lungs, which is what you need when you have pneumonia. My doctor prescribed some prescription cough suppressant, eventually, but only because I reached a point where I had coughed so hard, so long, that my ribs hurt too bad and I wasn't able to cough anymore. That was a no-win situation. A few days of rest for my ribs, and I was able to go back to hacking up my lungs.