I was laid off in the wake of the 9/11 recession, and I was lucky to get any job at all, even if it was a job with no benefits or health insurance. I came down with the flu, but I kept working. I had to.
I was making nowhere near the kind of money I did before I was laid off, and was living in a tiny little efficiency apartment in a former historic tavern and whorehouse. It was all I could afford, and I couldn’t miss much time from work if I was going to pay the rent.
But I wasn’t getting better. I was so short of breath, even talking on the phone exhausted me. I thought it was bronchitis, until I started getting chills and a high fever.
And then I woke up one morning with this weird noise in my chest that sounded like a large, crinkling ball of cellophane. “I wonder if these are rales?” I thought. I dragged myself to the computer: “Crackles are caused by the “popping open” of small airways and alveoli collapsed by fluid, exudate, or lack of aeration during expiration. The word “rales” derives from the French word râle meaning “rattle”.”
Basically, all I did was sleep and wake up with the chills. I’d take some ibuprofen, go back to sleep and wake up drenched in sweat. Again. My bedroom, which was barely bigger than the double bed, began to take on the rank smell of a high school gym.
This went on for about two weeks until I finally dragged myself to the doctor. I laid it out: Look, I have no insurance, I’m pretty sure I have pneumonia, and you’re going to give me a sample Z-pack. He tried to be professional (“I can’t diagnose you without an x-ray”) but he saw how sick and desperate I was; he might have been just a teensy bit afraid of the look in my eyes. So he went into his sample closet and came back with a Z-pack. I went home, took a capsule, and went back to bed. About three or four days later, the fever was gone but I was still very weak.
It took a good two months from start to finish before I could breathe without feeling exhausted. It’s the reason why I’m so religious now about flu shots.
I don’t know how many of you were among the readers who paid my bills and bought my groceries that month, but I am forever grateful.
