Pant, pant. In 1990 I had two small children, a course to teach, and a laboratory to run. When I started to have difficulty walking up the very steep hill to reach the parking lot, I just thought that I was out of shape because I was too busy to exercise properly. When I was tired I just thought that I was juggling a lot of balls and anyone would be tired. When I coughed some I just thought, well, people cough sometimes.
Then Tall Papa and I heard that there was an epidemic of mycoplasma pneumonia going around our town. Both of us went in to be checked and what do you know? We both had it. We were given an antibiotic (streptomycin, I believe) and over several days we got better.
Pneumonia is a big umbrella. It simply means an inflammation of the lungs. It comes in bacterial, viral, and physical forms and its severity depends greatly on the origin of the disease and the patient. Mycoplasma pneumonia, which we had, is usually self-limiting and generally responds well to antibiotics. Pneumococcus pneumonia, another bacterial pneumonia, can be more severe; it used to be called “the old man’s friend” because of the easy death it gave. Nowadays we have both a vaccine against it and antibiotics. Viral pneumonia can be caused by several viruses and some of them respond to antibiotics, too.
Please, can we leave Hillary’s medical care to her doctor?