Fever, Pneumonia & the Crisis

Day eight of the lung fever, the night the doctor promised would decide it. The crisis comes, and turns wrong. Your breath goes to a wet rattle, your lips shade blue, and the fever climbs past what the thermometer wants to say. The doctor holds your wrist, counts, and quietly sends for whoever you'd want in the room.

• Deathbed vigil, whispered goodbyes, last instructions, held hands
• Delirious between rattling breaths, you speak to people long gone
• If dawn finds you breathing yet, 7 days too weak to lift your head
• /me labors for each breath, the rattle audible across the quiet room

Recovery The night decides, survival means 7 days of round-the-clock nursing back from the edge.·Doctor, urgently

Double pneumonia, the doctor listens with his ear to your back and hears trouble on both sides. Mustard plasters, steam, brandy, and nine days of climbing fever end in one soaked, shaking night when the crisis breaks kindly at the last hour. You wake wrung out and ten pounds lighter, but you wake.

• Bedridden 5 days even after the fever breaks, standing makes the room swim
• A tearing cough that doubles you over for 7 days
• Fed broth by the spoonful, you can't manage the bowl yourself at first
• /me sits propped on pillows, grey-faced, riding out a coughing fit with a rag pressed to their mouth

Recovery 7 days from crisis to shaky-legged, a full return takes longer than the calendar likes.·Doctor, urgently

A creeping fever, a rose-spotted belly, and a head full of fog, typhoid, from the well everybody swore was sweet. The doctor orders cold baths that make you howl, a milk diet, and absolute bed rest, and the camp boils every drop of water while eyeing each other for who's next.

• Bedridden and foggy for 5 days, conversations drift and restart
• Cold-bath treatments twice daily, loudly protested
• Nothing but milk and broth for 7 days, you dream about steak
• The camp's boil-water regime is your fault and they mention it

Recovery 7 days of baths and bed to turn the fever, slack nursing and it relapses harder.·Doctor, urgently

The soaking you took last week has settled into your right lung, pneumonia, the honest kind. Fever climbs each evening, the cough stabs like a hatpin, and the doctor sets the schedule: mustard plasters, steam kettle, and the long wait for the crisis, which arrives on day seven and breaks kindly in a flood of sweat.

• Bedridden 4 days, the fever owns your evenings
• Mustard plasters that redden the chest and your opinion of medicine
• A stabbing cough, brace against a chair back and perform it
• Weak as well-water for 3 days after the crisis

Recovery 6 days with nursing to the crisis and out, untreated, the wrong lung wins.·Doctor, urgently

Every breath ends early, cut short by a knife-stitch low in your ribs, pleurisy, the lung's lining rubbing raw. The doctor straps your chest tight as a corset so the ribs can't swing, doses you with Dover's powder, and forbids anything that would make you laugh. Naturally, the camp spends three days trying.

• Chest strapped for 3 days, shallow breaths, no laughing, they'll try
• A hand pressed to the ribs during any exertion
• Sleeping propped upright for 3 nights
• /me stops mid-sentence, presses a hand flat to the ribs, and finishes the thought in a careful whisper

Recovery 5 days strapped and still, deep breaths come back a little at a time.·Doctor required

It went through the bunkhouse like a grass fire and now it's your turn: aching bones, streaming eyes, a fever that makes your teeth chatter at noon. Three days flat on your back with quinine bitters and whiskey-and-honey, cursing whoever coughed on the coffee pot first.

• Flat on your back for 3 days, aches in bones you didn't know you had
• Everything you've touched is suspect, the camp fumigates around you
• A voice like a rusted gate for 4 days

Recovery 4 days of bed and bitters, 6 if you try to work through it, it goes to the lungs on fools.·Doctor required

No cough, no spots, no story, just a fever that climbs to burning every evening and lets go before dawn, four nights running. The doctor calls it ague, doses you with quinine till your ears ring, and admits between visits that medicine is half guesswork and he's guessing.

• Evenings lost to the fever for 3 days, plan your scenes for mornings
• Quinine ringing in your ears, ask people to repeat themselves
• Soaked sheets every dawn, the wash line tells your story

Recovery 5 days of quinine and patience, it leaves the way it came, unexplained.·Doctor required

The cold went down instead of out and sits rattling in your chest like a loose stove bolt. Not pneumonia, yet, but the doctor says that word with his eyebrows. A blanket tent over a steaming kettle, a mustard plaster, and strict orders: warm, rested, and indoors until the rattle quits.

• Confined to warmth and rest for 3 days, no night rides, no river work
• The blanket-and-kettle steam tent twice a day, an undignified spectacle
• Coughing fits that stop conversation for 4 days
• /me emerges from under the steam blanket red-faced and dripping, hair plastered flat

Recovery 4 days of steam and rest, ignore it and roll again for lung fever.·Doctor required

A middling dose of whatever's going around: fever that waxes at night, joints like rusty hinges, and no appetite past broth. Two days of blankets, cool cloths on the forehead, and someone kind enough to sit with you turns it around.

• Abed 2 days, shaky if you cheat
• Cool-cloth nursing at the fever's peak, a bonding scene on a plate
• No appetite, wave off good food regretfully for 2 days

Recovery 3 days with rest and broth, 5 if you play the hero.·Doctor advised

A bark of a cough that arrives at midnight and sounds like a seal in distress, it wakes the bunkhouse and scares the dog. Steam from the kettle, honey and whiskey by the spoonful, and a flannel wrap for the throat quiet it, but the nights take three days to trust again.

• Nighttime coughing fits for 3 nights, apologize at breakfast
• Voice reduced to a croak, whisper through scenes for 2 days
• Honey-and-whiskey spoonfuls on a schedule, ideally administered by someone stern

Recovery 3 nights of steam and syrup, the daytime is nearly normal.·Doctor advised

The river soaking caught up with you at sundown: chattering teeth, blue nails, and a chill that no fire seems to reach. They wrap you in every blanket in camp, feed you hot toddies, and pile a warm dog on your feet. The fever that follows is short but mean, and it leaves you wrung out.

• One rough fevered night, shivering theatrics encouraged
• Wrapped by the stove for 1 day after, you hold court from the blankets
• A lingering shiver whenever you're out of the sun for 2 days
• /me pulls the blanket tighter and inches the chair closer to the stove, teeth still chattering

Recovery 2 days by the fire with hot food, it was a warning about rivers in spring.·Doctor advised

Fever with a hammer in it, your head pounds with every heartbeat and light feels like an insult. Two days in a darkened corner with cool cloths, willow-bark tea, and quinine, snapping at anyone who opens the door too wide.

• Dark room preferred for 2 days, squint and flinch in daylight
• Cool cloth on the brow, replaced by whoever's nursing you
• Short-tempered by fever, apologize afterward, or don't

Recovery 3 days from hammer to headache to whole.·Doctor advised

A low fever that steals your appetite and your ambition together. Food looks like work, coffee tastes like punishment, and standing too fast dims the lamps. Somebody takes over spoon-feeding you broth, mostly to enjoy the novelty of you being biddable.

• Weak and listless for 2 days, no heavy work
• Spoon-fed broth scenes for whoever claims the honor
• You lose a little weight and people notice

Recovery 3 days of broth and being fussed over.·Doctor advised

One honest day of fever, sweated out under every blanket you own with a kettle of willow-bark tea. By the second morning you wake clear-headed and damp as a dishrag, with nothing left of it but the laundry.

• One day lost to the blankets
• A powerful thirst and a night sweat's worth of laundry
• Mild wobble till noon the next day

Recovery A day and a night, sweated clean.·No doctor needed

A head cold of the common kind: streaming nose, watering eyes, and a sneeze that arrives in volleys of three. You are pitiable rather than sick, and you intend to collect on that difference all week.

• Sneezing fits in threes, time them for dramatic moments
• A red nose and a borrowed handkerchief for 2 days
• Milk the sympathy shamelessly

Recovery 2 days of hot toddies and self-pity, either one optional.·No doctor needed

A scratchy throat and a voice dropping registers by the hour. The frontier pharmacopoeia has exactly one entry for this and you take it gladly: whiskey and honey, warm, on a schedule you enforce yourself with suspicious enthusiasm.

• A croaky, gravelly voice for 2 days, enjoy the new register
• Medicinal toddies at intervals, strictly for the throat
• A mild cough that shows up when convenient

Recovery 2 days, sweetened considerably by the treatment.·No doctor needed

An evening of shivers after the cold ride, enough to earn the chair nearest the stove and the first pull of the coffee. By morning it's gone like it was never there, leaving only a wariness of wet saddles.

• One evening claimed by the stove, territorial about the warm chair
• Early to bed for a night
• Fine by breakfast, and slightly smug about it

Recovery One warm night does it.·No doctor needed

You felt it coming on at supper, the ache, the chill, the heavy eyes, and declared war: three blankets, two toddies, and a stubborn refusal to be sick. Dawn finds you soaked, victorious, and insufferable about your method.

• One damp, triumphant morning
• Your blanket-and-toddy cure gets preached to every sniffler for a week
• Not so much as a cough remains

Recovery Done by breakfast, you'll dine out on the method for longer.·No doctor needed

The sickness that flattened half the bunkhouse spent itself on you in two sneezes and an early night. By morning you're the last one standing, which means you're now cook, nurse, and errand rider for a camp full of groaning invalids.

• Perfectly healthy, and drafted into nursing everyone who isn't
• Carry broth, empty basins, endure complaints for 2 days
• Your constitution becomes briefly famous

Recovery Nothing to recover, you're the recovery plan for everyone else.·No doctor needed

The fever hit you like it hit the others, one furnace of a night, the kind that breaks men, and your body broke it instead, in a single spectacular sweat that soaked clean through the mattress ticking. You wake at dawn ravenous, eat five eggs and a pan of biscuits, and the doctor takes your pulse twice because he doesn't believe it the first time.

• Ravenous for a day, eat like a thresher crew and let it be seen
• The doctor mutters about writing you up for a medical journal
• Anyone sick wants to touch you for luck now
• /me mops the last of five eggs with a biscuit and asks, sincerely, what's for dinner

Recovery Broken clean by dawn, the mattress needed longer than you did.·No doctor needed