Thanks
gingernut. I felt fairly sure that the viral stage was well behind her. Despite being a passionate non smoker, she nearly always coughs her little heart out for days - weeks even - after a cold. "I'm not taking drugs" is one of her mantras. Then we have one of those "well go and cough over there then" type of conversations.
This time however, I felt she was showing classical secondary infections symptoms, lungs a bit wet, and the produce starting to thicken. It's just the common sense bit about the impending surgery. This 20 min lady's type procedure costs as much as an hysterectomy, so to have it messed up by hitting the moment where doctors dig their heels in about anti-biotics really does seem unfortunate.
She's going to have to change her airline ticket for our son's reception, as well. Three friends involved in the logistics to get her to and from, daughter spent 12 hours away from her two infants driving or waiting - it goes on and on. I think doctors need to think about how far reaching some of the affects can be. In my wife's case in affected a charming surgeon, and no doubt someone that he could have done instead. ( She did phone the day before to warn them, but they said come in and we'll take a look at you)
If some needy person had wanted her place, she'd have given one of her huge smiles and said okay. But all this for the want of a short coarse of pills...
In the latter stages of my flying ooop north, I was with a young chap all one night that coughed his lungs out. ' I'm getting better' says he. I ended up with double pneumonia. 36 hours - a hot burning in the lungs, 40 hours - feeling really unwell, but now away from base. 45 hours, lungs on fire and feeling like hell. From going off duty, I hadn't seen a single soul in between then and getting back from my very lonely digs - so I'm pretty sure where it came from - I had never been so ill in my life. A second f/o stood behind me to monitor, upon landing, the flight was canceled, pax stranded, doctor called - I even considered calling an ambulance to the airfield it was that bad. All so avoidable.
I was talking yesterday about having to fly with a stinker of a cold. That or send our regular and dependent pax home. F/O said he wasn't happy, but could see that half the airline was sneezing, so bit of a fait accompli. I proved that you could share a flightdeck with someone with a heavy cold...and not catch it. Every sneeze, I grabbed for a small hand towel instead of a handkerchief, and wiped the power levers etc., with something strong every few moments. Kept the contagious route to a minimum and the airborne into the towel. It worked. After hours with me he didn't get a tickle.