How to nurse yourself through pneumonia at home

[Aquaria]

22. OMG This

I'd had pneumonia by itself before, but what came with swine flu was unfrickingbelievable.

By the way: It's not addiction alone that makes it tough to get pain meds with pneumonia outside of a hospital setting. The other reason is that nearly all of the effective pain medications and sedatives like opioids are contraindicated for anyone experiencing breathing problems. You have to be carefully monitored, or you could stop breathing for good, and that will totally suck. Hence why pneumonia patients will only get pain meds if they're in the hospital.

When my swine flu took on pneumonia, my husband called my mom the RN, who somehow rustled up a few dozen Percocet (!). Because she was caring for my stepfather who was an invalid by then and couldn't come take care of me herself like she wanted, a friend of ours met up with her to pick it up, and brought it back with explicit instructions from my mother for when to give it to me: Only when my husband could be there to watch over me, and not to leave my side for longer than necessary. She did pitch a fit that I should be in the hospital, but my husband couldn't drive and the drug mule friend couldn't be anywhere near me because he was hyper-immunosuppressed (he brought the meds to my husband's workplace). That left relying on an ambulance to get me to the hospital, and I didn't want to go that route. I decided to take my chances with riding it out.

That was probably really stupid of me. It's a wonder I didn't die, but I thought I'd be better "in a few days." It wound up taking a lot of those "few days" to get there.

Anyway, I was so damned glad to have that Percocet. I thought I was going to lose my mind if I didn't get some relief from the agony. I couldn't even sleep longer than 5-10 minute patches because I was in so much pain.