Monday, July 28, 2008

Still Sick

Friday I realized I was getting worse, not better. Must have been because Thursday night I had 103 fever and was hallucinating. So I went to see my doctor, he said I had pneumonia and gave me some antibiotics for it. I thought I'd had a viral bronchitis and there was nothing to do but ride it out. Feel a little bit better today, most importantly, I haven't had the 7 pm fever-fest that I'd been having for 2 weeks, after my first dose of antibiotics on Friday.

The Chantix is helping me cut down on the smoking. Bad lungs wouldn't do it, I've had lungs far worse than this and barely been able to cut back. But now I've only had 2 cigarettes over the weekend and have not been going crazy, which is pretty amazing. I still want to smoke even with the Chantix but the desire is reduced enough that I can fight it most of the time, something I can't do normally. So I have high hopes of Chantix eventually getting me completely off the cigarettes, even if it takes a while.

I don't mind taking the Chantix longer because all minor side effects disappeared after the first week except that it's really curbing my appetite, which makes it worth while just for that even if I don't quite smoking. My doc weighed me and I'd lost 5 lbs, while smoking half what I normally would. That is simply amazing.

1 comment:

Village Green said...

Sorry to hear about the pneumonia -- but keep up the excellent work on stopping smoking. Whoever came up with the term "coffin nails" as a metaphor for cigarettes was right on.