h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi folks! Still coughing up blood - no sandy stuff, just slime and a bit of blood. And I went in for the x-rays today ... I have pneumonia! An infection in my left lower lung lobe. My sister (whom I've read the test results to) thinks it's the lung membrane that got infected. This might even have been the main problem, the source of the extreme pain I've been feeling in my side. So it wasn't a case of the lungs pressing on the intestines and causing pain, as it was a case of the intestines pressing on the bottom of the lung and causing pain.

But I might have had a problem with my colon at the same time; the constipation certainly has been a long-term constant and something I'd best deal with.

So I have to complete another course of antibiotics and return for another scan in a month.

Pain-wise I feel much better now! Just a bit of pain when I breathe in deeply. At least I can breathe in deeply again.

Sasha, my own stress situation does complicate things. I do have a condition, fibromyalgia, in which stress gets turned into pains manifesting in precise spots, inexplicably without any physical cause. But as a result of having this, I easily ignore pains that do have real physical causes. It's almost impossible to tell the two apart, but the 'real' pains end up becoming worse while the fibromyalgia tends to clear up after a time.