Posted by medlib on April 20, 2003, at 19:37:05
In reply to Re: Where has the Hoovermeister went?, posted by Larry Hoover on April 19, 2003, at 9:47:08
Hi Larry--
It's great to see that you've returned! You are indeed fortunate to have received good care. Such is not the case everywhere. I spent a week in hospital with bacterial pneumonia a couple of years ago, and the "care" I was a victim of was so appallingly bad that I swore never to be hospitalized again. I have since equipped myself so that I can "check out" before I'm checked in again. I was a RN (at that hospital!) before I was a medical librarian, and I can honestly say that it's no longer safe to be sick (at least in my part of the US).
For the record, pneumonia is not a discrete disease, but a set of symptoms which can have any one of several causative agents. Although SARs is the first viral agent to cause sudden onset pneumonia, bacterial agents which do so (and have a high rapid mortality rate) have been around for quite some time. For example, Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets) died a few years ago of pneumonia less than 72 hours after becoming ill. Also, severe viral illnesses can weaken the immune system enough to make one more vulnerable to a secondary bacterial (or viral) infection. Which explains how one can start out fighting the flu (viral) and end up battling a strep throat (bacterial). And, although the flu can segue neatly into viral pneumonia as exudate collects in the lower alveoli, the same flu can just as easily (and, probably more often, does) "clear a path" for pneumococcal (or other) bacteria to set up camp.
Before SARs, viral pneumonia used to be called "walking around pneumonia", implying that it is less severe than the bacterial kind. In my book, though, not being able to breathe is damned scary, whatever the cause. Depression is bad enough; it seems particularly unfair that it predisposes us to so many other ailments, as well.
And now, if plowing through the verbiage above hasn't triggered a relapse, welcome back.---medlib
poster:medlib
thread:220511
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030417/msgs/220962.html