I stumbled upon this article about killer viruses this morning, and it pretty much echos exactly everything that happened to me. I had a nap a few months ago, only to wake up with severe fever and chills. I thought I was battling the flu, and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better. Six days later I was in the ICU at St. Paul’s with a 104 degree F fever, and my left lung had partially collapsed due to pneumonia. A high school varsity athlete, a sturdy guy with a health history blissfully free of blips, 18-year-old Joseph Spencer had little reason to think anything was seriously ...

Last night I was released from St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver to continue the healing process at home. I won’t make this a long entry becuase frankly, I find it physically rather hard to type and concentate for writing emails and things right now. The whole episode that led me to head to the hospital is as follows. On Saturday night I was finding myself really short of breath at home. Plus, no matter what medication I took, I just couldn’t seem to get my fever to come down. I hit a point when it hit 39C and my heart rate wouldn’t settle down and I thought to myself that something was ...

Friday morning, I woke up with a rather large fever, and spent the first hour or two hugging a toilet. I was feeling pretty defeated, so I called my mom out in Chilliwack and asked her to come out and spend the night with me. It’s been really great. They made me a meal, looking after me, did my laundry, and tried to do what they could to make me feel better. I went to bed, and actually had a pretty decent sleep. Unfortunately, I had a really large fever upon waking up today, and realized that something wasn’t really right. I went down to the walk in clinic with Marty, which was a challenge ...