Aingon Atelia wrote:
>
>
>>Aingon Atelia wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>>On Mar 1, 3:28 am, sf > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>>>I believe it now. What happened to poor Blinky?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>He died.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I gather that, but from what?
>>>>>
>>>>>We suspect it was pneumonia.
>>>>>--
>>>>
>>>>So was his vomiting a red herring?
>>>
>>>
>>>Started with some kind of flu-like thing, and then progressed into
>>>something resembling pnuemonia. Again, this is from things he said,
>>>there has been no official pronouncement yet.
>>>
>>
>>I thought people only died (in the modern world) of pneumonia if they
>>were already ill with something else?

Not necessarily. People still die of the flu and its aftermath. That's
why we try to vaccinate against it. The second sickest I've ever been
was with influenza. I'm a strong, healthy, middle-aged adult and I was
so sick, with high fever and respiratory symptoms and terrible body
pain, that I was more than a little scared. And it took me a long time
to get well.

(The absolute sickest I've ever been was with dengue fever that I got
from a mosquito bite down in Mexico and I was more than a little scared,
I thought I was going to die.)


> I was reviewing some of the email he sent while he was sick, and
> something jumped out that I hadn't noticed before. He mentioned that he
> was having trouble holding onto a new bar of soap with his right hand.
> I'm wondering if perhaps he didn't have all kinds of things happening to
> him at once.

Even "just" the flu can crash your system, creating a cascade of all
sorts of symptoms and failures.

>>Though in all the times i hastily jumped out of the pool when blinky
>>swam up i never recall him saying anything about any previous or
>>chronic conditions.
>>
>>Even his complaints about stress that took him to the Joshua tree park
>>to de-stress & where he took some lovely photos never seemed anything
>>more than the usual, run of the mill, ordinary, everyday, modern world
>>stress.
>
>
> Nope - other than a couple of chronic skin issues he was basically
> healthy, at least to my knowledge, and I'm the one he would have told
> first. He certainly didn't tell me he was as sick as he obviously was.

He probably didn't know how sick he was. In modern times we've
forgotten how deadly the flu can be. The influenza epidemic of 1918
killed over 50 million people; young, old, rural, urban, rich or poor.

Medical advances give flu victims a better shot at recovering but it
still comes down to supporting the patient while their own immune system
fights off the virus.

The flu shots don't offer 100% protection, especially not when they
guess wrong about the season's dominant strain. But even if you do
catch the flu the shot's effects can lessen the severity of your
symptoms. I work as a substitute teacher. My exposure is massive, and
if I get sick, the numbers exposed to me are massive. And then they
expose their families ... So I get the damned shots.

And that's my recommendation to everybody who doesn't have a medical
reason not to... Get the damned shots.