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 ...

I nearly went into work today, but still felt a bit under the weather this morning and decided to rest a bit more. So tomorrow, I’m going to head into work and see if I can pull off a full day. I tried to go to the clinic tonight for a check-up, but there was over a two hour wait, so I’m going to try again in the morning on my way to work. Also, this weekend I’ll be attending Mike and Kim’s wedding as the primary photographer, which is both exciting and a bit stressful. It’s not hard to grab a camera and take a bunch of photos, but it is hard to be prepared, both technically and mentally, ...

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 ...

After work, I was feeling a bit tired so I laid down for a quick nap. When I woke up a few hours later, not only did I have a wicked headache, most of my joints hurt too. I’ve since turned the heat up in my apartment to around 28C, and I’m still shivering on the couch with some blankets on. The next couple days are pretty busy for me, so I can’t really afford to be sick. I’m going to head to bed now and hopefully wake up at a reasonable hour. My cute maid is coming again in the morning — so exciting. ...