System breakdown

I very rarely get sick and I mean properly sick like the flu. I’m not talking about the flu that most people commonly get where you have a snotty nose or maybe a sore throat, I’m talking about the flu where you have a high temperature (>380C), your whole body aces, you feel cold but you sweating like a pig and you too week to even sit up in bed. I’m one of those people that only missed two days out of 12 years of my school career for being sick and have never missed a day of work for being sick either.

There is a very good reason why I have such a strong immune system. My father is a Pediatrician working in a South African government hospital and as he is exposed to so many viruses and sicknesses on a daily basis his body naturally builds up antibodies against all these sicknesses. As he comes into contact with the rest of the family back home it is all passed on to us in a similar manner. Sounds a bit far fetch maybe, but trust me that’s the way it works.

This scenario has been very different for me as I felt like I was in one of those medical drama series with doctors trying to discover what is wrong with me. Due to my father being a specialist in the medical field for so many years I’m very fortunate to get to see so many different specialist doctors to help me out.

After getting married and while on honeymoon I started coughing quite a lot and had a very tight chest. As usual I thought I’d just picked up a bit of a cough, I felt fine so all was good. A few days later in the week I seemed to be coughing more and my chest felt even tighter. I was beginning to become a little concerned about this only because I was scheduled to race the Double Century (a 202km team road cycling race ) on the coming Saturday and not because of my actual condition. It would take a lot for me to pull out of the race and let the rest of the team down. Other than the coughing and tight chest, which is obviously not ideal to have for a race, I didn’t feel sick so I believed I was good to go. Well I can now honestly say from a personal perspective the seriousness of racing when you are not 100% healthy!

The Sunday evening after Saturday’s race my coughing had progressed to an uncontrollable manner! I phone my father and he said I need to go on antibiotics immediately (pharmacy visit number 1). Relief I thought as that would fix me up in just a few days… little did I know…

Monday evening the fever hit me. My body was acing and my temperature rose above 380C. I felt exhausted as I wasn’t getting much sleep during the nights because of the persistent coughing. Now I was taking Panardo to help fight the fever.

Tuesday was no different as I was still feeling sick and coughing endlessly with a phenomenally tight chest. However, that afternoon I started to notice something very strange. My legs had swelled up in a big way, turned very red and were incredibly itchy! All my scares from my cycling and mountain biking expeditions had puffed up as well. I showed my father and he told me to stop the antibiotics immediately as I was having an allergic reaction to them! Now I was thinking how am I going to get better? I’ve never been allergic to anything in my life before so I couldn’t understand where this all of a sudden came from? So I had to resort to an antihistamine for the allergic reaction (pharmacy visit number 2).

Wednesday things were looking a little better on the allergic reaction side as the swelling in my legs decreased a bit and the itchiness was gone but they were still as red as a Ferrari. I still felt rather sick and nothing was changing in the department of my chest and uncontrollable coughing.

Thursday the swelling in my legs was gone but they were still Ferrari red. I was feeling better but there was still no change in my coughing and tight chest. I have never felt my chest like this before where every breath is a struggle. By this time now my ribs are hurting so much from all the coughing and my stomach muscles are stiff as well. Now my farther thinks its time for me to get my chest X-rayed to try figure out what’s going on. So I’m off for a hospital visit. I get my chest X-rayed accompanied with a complete examination by a Physician. “You got Pneumonia and you going to have to take it easy for a few weeks” is not what an athlete wants to hear! Back to the pharmacy for visit number 3 and I need to report back to the doctor regarding my condition on Saturday.

All is quite the same on Friday. Saturday comes and I’m feeling better but I’m still struggling with my chest. So the doctor prescribes me something else and back to the pharmacy I went for visit number 4!

By Sunday things are beginning to get a little better. So now it’s just a matter of finishing the course of medications and taking it real easy for a little while to recover and ensure I don’t have a relapse.

Basically to summarize, I pick up pneumonia while on honeymoon. I didn’t know this as I simply had a tight chest and a cough. I was feeling ok, so I raced the Double Century. This intensified the pneumonia and made me to get very ill and feverish. I was on antibiotics, which I got an allergic reaction to and therefore had to stop those. I then got my chest X-rayed and examined by a Physician to diagnose me with pneumonia. Now I have to take it easy in December to recover.

In all of this at least the Physician pointed out from my chest X-ray that I have an athletes shaped heart and huge lungs!