This is why I do not read newspapers...

Ok, a little late to be feeling lucky to be alive but anyway...

Remember in 2006 when I was ill with Pneumonia? I was off work for 4 weeks in total & had to be hospitalized for a week before that?

Well, in the paper today, kindly pointed out to me by my ever loving father, is an article on Pneumonia and it's causes & effects. It sort of skimmed over what causes it, apparently you 'breathe in' the germ & tada, you'll have Pneumonia by the end of the week. But its not that thats bothering me. What's bothering me is this:

I know that the very young & the old are most at risk, or people with really bad health & that having Pneumonia then leaves a frighteningly high risk of death hanging over you, I understand that & I know why, but reading this article made me feel, well, kind of really lucky.

A young healthy girl, like me, (yeah yeah, shut up people that know my sick record) had caught this & was told by her doctor that if she hadn't gone into hospital that day then she would have been dead by the next. Her lungs would have collapsed in her sleep. She went onto recover & voila, she is fit & healthy again. My doctor has told me that my lung will be permantly scarred from the infection & not to be surprised if I get periods of breathnessless in extreme cold, heat or when i'm ill. All subsequent x rays have shown scar tissue in my lung. She hasn't been told that, she's made a full recovery. So does this mean my infection was more severe? Does this mean I was so much closer to death? Her symptoms were way worse than mine, yes I was in pain & god was I tired, but I never once felt like I was dying. I had a cough a smoker would have been proud of & I hacked up a half a lung during one sleepless night, but I didn't feel really, really ill. Could the drugs they pumped into me stopped me from feeling like that?

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that maybe I was closer to oblivion than I realised. I've never really read up on Pneumonia & therefore didn't realise that not being in the high risk catergories didn't necessarily mean I would be fine. Well, look at me, I'm not 100% fit, I get more colds than all the people I know & I get knackered really easily cos my immune system hasn't been fabulous since. I must have been way more sick than I thought & that scares me.

I'm simply saying I'm going to enjoy my life more. I'm not going to get so stressed out about work anymore, I'm not going to waste time on people that mess me about, I'm not going to mooch around whinging that I'm tired or I'm fed up. I'm going to have more holidays, do more for me & my family & my dearest friends.

Maybe this is the wake up call I needed people...