My Pneumonia Experience

I was unfortunate to experience this condition during my holidays in the summer few years back home in Malaysia. It was just like any other fever for me, the temperature, the headache, the cough. Peculiarly, I also have had excessive sweating all over my body especially at night.
A week passed and I felt weaker and weaker by day. It was so tormenting I found myself crying myself to sleep each of the nights in my room.

I found myself in and out of clinics, being prescribed a lot of antibiotics (but never noted which kinds..lol..back then I know nothing about antibiotic so I never really take note). As the fever carried on and off for 2 weeks, with night sweats, neverending cough, I 'thankfully' vomit real bad one night which thankfully lead my parents to finally decide that I have to go to the hospital for real checkup.

Xrays showed my left lower lobe are mildly perfused,having light shadows of pneumonia patches.


A patient with pneumonia seen with large focal consolidation in the left mid-lung.(source)

I was admitted that night and spend 4/5 days in the Hospital Kajang ward.
I was prescribed erythromycin, augmentin and have had to inhale menthol vapour (im not sure what its called tho..sorry :p). Oh and also some parenteral fluid therapy (injected into my vessel) to keep me hydrated (ie to maintain fluids in my body), also Ive read somewhere that it is also to encourage coughing to get rid of the gooey stuffs hehe.

Pneumonia is very common with people with low immune system, that is why we always encounter patients who have AIDS have pneumonia because their immune system is compromised.

The most dangerous type of pneumonia is those caused by bacteria with genus Klebsiella. This is because Klebsiella pneumonia are necrotizing process (necrosis = death of cells) to our lungs. We can detect this if our expelled sputum have a beefy-like smell in addition to above mentioned symptoms.

Klebsiella pneumonia can kill. It kills approx 50% of patients even with antimicrobial therapy. (source)

For medical students:

1)click here for basic diagnostics from Wikipedia.
2) click here for interactive pneumonia lesson with MedlinePlus.