Well, BirdDancer, I am very relieved you seem to have some answers, at least. Sometimes, I find, I have to take a step back in order to make a leap forward. I hope your leap starts now.

In my younger days of occasional hubris as a surgeon, I think I thought I knew everything about medicine and surgery. Well, I got something a bit like you have one winter and I kept working my insane hours and pretty soon, while my wife was out of town, I began visually hallucinating one night. Apparently, I found it amusing. I called my mom, laughing, evidently, and she and my dad came right over and took me straight to the hospital where I was a faculty member. They immediately checked my O2 sat and it was in the mid 80s. It should have been darn near 100 at my age. I was hallucinating because I was hypoxic.

They admitted me for a pretty nasty-looking (on the films) pneumonia and gave me a couple of days of IV antibiotics. The very white-haired and humble and wise ID doc gleefully told me I was a typical surgeon. Thought I knew everything and thought I could never get sick, because I was/am invincible. Took me three weeks to even get back to the clinic. I have never been sick like that in my life. That pneumonia just destroyed me. Lost 25 lbs. And then I understood why pneumonia is every year one of the top 10 causes of death in the US.

I share all this not for me, but rather, to just illustrate with a little story how incredibly wise it was of you to go and be seen today. These things can literally be lethal if they get out of hand. They are, in fact, lethal. So, good job! Good on you!

I hope you begin to feel better soon, but I suspect as is so often the case, it will take a couple of days for the medication to really begin to help you feel better. I hope that is soon. Sending you support and prayers.