The Summer of Pneumonia

I’ve been writing this blog long enough that I sometimes pull up old entries and am thrown off that the post is 10 years old.

One of the constants over the lifetime of this blog is that prepping/homesteading/home economics/whatever title we want to give to it is that the action needs to be driven by an awareness that ‘something’ may happen that prevents you from ‘normal’ day to day life and you should do what you can to make that time period, and the transition in and out of it, as easy as possible.

I have to admit I didn’t factor in 2022 into this discussion. Which isn’t entirely true if you are at all involved in homesteading, rural urban or otherwise, media culture you’re going to run into the gold or not gold, are we heading into world war 3, no it’s not a world war it’s a Great Depression conversations. I mean that when I started really leaning into production again in 2020 I didn’t know what this year would look like.

And I would not have included 2 months of pneumonia in that discussion.

Today makes two months, exactly, that I’ve been symptomatic. And it’s getting there. It’s not nearly as violent as it has been. I can go for walks, sort of. I can’t do my own grocery shopping on foot, I don’t have the lung capacity. I can’t be around any smoke. Hells, even just getting ANGRY is enough to set off a flare. But I’m not coughing into black outs anymore. And I don’t feel like my lungs are in a vise. Three doctors, two rounds of antibiotics, prednisone, some sort of cough meds they only give to asthmatics, several herbs, a couple of allergy meds, hot showers, tea, honey…It’s been a long two months.

So my ‘production’ so far this year has to lean into the idea of multiple streams of food and supplies. Everything or almost everything this spring and summer has been purchased, because for a long time I had to do dishes masked or just the scent of dish soap would set off a flare.

And I’m ok with this. Because years ago I made a promise to myself to do the work, whatever the work can be at the time, when I can do it. We’re still eating tomatoes I canned in the fall of 2020. And honestly, commercial canned soup is still food. I watch for sales, I layer discounts, I have budgets set aside for prep. I’ve rearranged my kitchen several times to account for space.

There’s a lot of big noise, scary talking points going around right now. I’m not saying they’re all completely without merit. But the thing is, we should be doing this work because life is full of unplanned situations.

Like not being able to stand up without passing out for two months.