Pneumonia

Looking over my journal I see that two years ago I was diagnosed with an atypical pneumonia with secondary reactive arthritis.  I'd been having dreadful coughing fits and becoming increasingly lethargic for a while so my doctor sent me for chest a X-Ray.  This led to one of the all-time great interactions with Britain's National Health Service: -

Nurse: "You've obviously got some sort of pneumonia.  Before we go any further, have you traveled anywhere unusual of late?"

Me: "Well, I was wandering around respiratory care hospitals in Beijing a few weeks ago."

Nurse: "Excuse me whilst I put on this mask."

This was 2006 and for a while there I was 'Patient Zero' in the upcoming European Bird Flu pandemic.  In the end it was diagnosed as 'atypical', meaning that no one had any idea except that I'd probably been on too many planes.

The arthritis hit a month later.  I was running a two-day workshop in Newmarket in Suffolk when just before lunch on the second day I felt a twinge in my left ankle that I couldn't explain.  By mid-afternoon I was limping badly and by the time I got off the train at Liverpool Street station at 7pm I couldn't walk at all.  I was on crutches for about seven weeks including a few excruciatingly painful days on the cobblestoned streets of Lisbon.

Again, the NHS had no definitive diagnosis; the arthritis was probably my body's reaction to the earlier pneumonia and both conditions would totally resolve with no long-term after-effects.  Two years on this prognosis seems happily correct.

My journal from the time is unsurprisingly depressing, the consistent theme being if I don't work I don't get paid.  And much of my work involves plane flights.

This is the reality of self-employment.  You have to look after your health because you will go broke if you don't.  This is not to say that your clients aren't nice people who wish you well.  I consider quite a few of my clients as friends but as much as they'd like to help me out, I have to do the work first.

Over the next few months I have a lot of flying to do and there is no excuse for getting ill.