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They Call Me Wheezy
By Mike | December 27, 2007
The worst of my pneumonia passed in time for the holidays, but I’m still feeling its effects in my lungs.
I’m going to have to ask the doc why. The megadose of antibiotics made short work of the fever, and I’m on a ten-day course of the stuff (last pill tomorrow). The bacteria should be good and dead by now, so I can’t imagine my lungs are still filling up with muck.
For that matter, I thought I’d be coughing up a lot of muck but it hasn’t happened. Twice I got a little strand of something reminiscent of lo mein noodle, but no great blobs of red or pink goo one might otherwise associate with a lung problem.
Instead I’ve got some kind of bronchial irritation. Maybe it’s due to the coughing last week, maybe not. Maybe a bunch of the alveoli in my lungs croaked from the bacteria and/or flood of mucus. All I know for sure is I cough if I take too deep a breath and I get winded fairly easily.
And that’s not exactly conducive to a karate workout.
I returned to class on Saturday. We worked some wazas, specifically on a speed form. Do enough of them and you get a good cardio workout. Or, in my case, you start hacking and wheezing between drills. I kept up, but one of my classmates thought I was going to pass out. My technique was a mess, too. One week between classes and I felt like a rookie again. My body remembered, but I kept overthinking things and ran into trouble.
Tonight was only marginally better. I ran my katas last night and that still wore me out. I felt a lot better about my techniques, though, and that continued to tonight. Unfortunately I still got good and tired running wazas again, and I had to resist the urge to beg off the mat for a drink of water. My three sparring matches went a little better, if only because my opponents and I score points quick and never go the full two minutes.
The long and the short of it is pneumonia sucks. If you’re at all active, stay away from buffet lines and salad bars this winter. And if you’re sick, stay the hell home!
Topics: Fitness, General, Shuri-Ryu |