I have been absent for a few days as I have and am fighting pneumonia.  These are the kinds of things that really get me down.  When I feel like I am making some positive progress it seems like a setback is always waiting for me right around the corner.

It is no surprise that I have pneumonia.  The saddest and hardest part for me is, it is really hard for me to know anymore if there is something really wrong or if it is a part of my “new normal”.

I have asthma and COPD so I always have some degree of wheezing and shortness of breath.  Then there is pain…I always have pain and it is of varying degrees.  I am still healing from my almost 2 foot long incision from last summer, healing from all the chest tubes, drains that I have had, healing from my ventral hernia repair surgery with a six inch incision from the end of May.  My fibromyalgia causes me pain and is worse in times of stress.

I used to be able to say without a doubt something is wrong with _______!  Now, I second guess myself, I let things go to the point of being doubled over in pain because I’m not sure if it’s something that is really wrong or did I just move the wrong way?

With my pneumonia my biggest complain was pain on my left side.  I ALWAYS have pain on my left side though, so I wait until I have a scheduled appointment to have it looked at because maybe it will go away and maybe it is nothing.  I wonder if maybe I am just a “wuss” and need to suck it up.  So, I guess lucky for me I had a dr appt this week or I would probably be a lot worse off.

I will go back to the Dr. tomorrow and have a chest X-ray and follow-up appt.  Praying that this is improving with my home therapies as I will be so mad if I have to miss the 4th of July holiday stuck in a hospital again….

Last year at this time I was still in the Mayo Clinic hospital and finally having trials off the ventilator of breathing on my own.  This is around the time that some of memories started to become real and also very painful.  As always, I am still trying to put those pieces back together.