Signs.....

It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was two years ago, and it's still fresh in my mind.

I should have known something was up. I lost 50 pounds in six months. I could not stop  coughing. And I was always out of breath. I could not figure out just what in the hell was going on. I was in the gym six days a week; I did cardio and lifted weights. I was looking good..That January, I was 5-11, 220 pounds...my arms were huge. I was in the best shape of my life. I felt food, and looked it, too. But during that winter, I noticed something....a nagging, dry cough. It didn't produce anything. It was just a nagging, dry cough. I couldn't figure it out, so I went to my doctor.

"Pneumonia."

"Pneumonia?"

"Yep. I'll get you some antibiotics."

Biggest pills I had ever seen. Went through me like a damn choo-choo train. I had the worst diarrhea ever. I puked until there was no tomorrow. But I still had that goddamn cough. It wouldn't go away. I had a followup with my PCP, told him what was going on, and he prescribed another round of antibiotics. Same thing: puking, diarrhea, yadda, yadda,yadda- and that damned cough! Just what in the hell was going on?

I couldn't get rid of the cough, so I just kept a big bag of Ricolas nearby, and gave up on my doctor. I wasn't exactly dying from pneumonia, even though that cough was nagging the hell out of me. I figured that I would slack off the gym routine and relax a bit. Besides, I didn't have the wind or the strength I had before. I figured maybe I should relax for a while, so I did. Over the spring, the coughing got so bad that I didn't bother to notice that my clothes where getting too big or that I was having a hard time just walking up a flight of stairs; I didn't notice that I was having a tough time simply walking out to my car in the parking lot. If I didn't have pneumonia, just what in the hell was going on?