Some of you who saw me at WWDC noted that I looked tired and puny, or at least as puny as a Giganto like me gets. Yeah, I'm out of shape, but I regularly engage in cardio activities far more stressful than walking around Moscone West without getting tired, at least until a few weeks ago. I thought it was just sinus drainage, but now that it's gone on for four weeks, and the coughing kept me from sleeping last night, it's becoming harder to stick with that idea.

Today, it turned out that there really is a simple answer: I have might have pneumonia have bronchitis!

After talking to the doctor's office today, they sent me out to the hospital for a chest X-ray. Although I get tired, I'm normally pretty healthy, so I hadn't been there in a long time.

Admissions clerk: Have you been treated here before?

Me: Yes, when I broke my arm when I was 4.

Clerk: [pause] We'll probably need to start the paperwork from scratch.

They won't have a final reading on the X-ray until in the morning, since it didn't get taken until late afternoon, but they wouldn't have asked for one if they didn't suspect pneumonia or something similar, even though it came out clear. I got some nifty new prescriptions, though, including Cipro, and a non-narcotic cough syrup, except for the "non-" part. It's tasty, but it interferes with work. (I come back to text later and say, "Hey, you're not supposed to spell 'Linux' with an octothorpe!")

I tried an antibiotics regimen before WWDC "just in case," but Cipro is the heavy-duty stuff, Made With Genuine Plutonium™. (A friend just asked me if it makes your pee glow in the dark. I don't know yet, but he says "science demands an answer.")

So, yeah, pneumonia and bronchitis aren't my first choices, but at least they explain things - the weeks of cough that haven't stopped, the fact that the coughing isn't really that "productive" (as the medicine labels delicately put it), the constant fatigue and napping (because I'm not sleeping through the night and normally don't know it), the reduced air capacity that's unlike previous sinus problems I've had, and so on. I'm not cheering for infections, but I am cheering for answers.

I had to go get groceries after all this so I can rest for a few days, which is hard to do when the only food in the house is flour, cheese, and canned beans. That was after going three rounds with the pharmacy because the insurance company didn't want to pay for my prescriptions. I make a small co-payment for each prescription and the rest is fully covered. Straightening it out took over half an hour.

Then, when I got back to the car, I looked at the actual prices on the prescriptions: two were for exactly my co-payment, and one was for my co-payment plus 19 cents. I spent half an hour exhausted in the pharmacy trying to get an insurance company to pay 19 cents. Note to pharmacists: I could have used more information on that before the battle started.

I'm sure I'll be sleeping a bit more over the next few days (did I mention how tasty this cough syrup is?) as whatever is in my lungs goes bye-bye, but at least now we're pretty close to figuring out what it is. I knew I wasn't that winded on my own - walking from here to there has never exhausted me before, and hopefully by next week, it won't again.

(Is there an umlaut in "Linux"? No? Hmm.)