Pneumonia: A first-person experience

I’m 12 years old, and I’ve already had pneumonia (pronounced ‘nuh-moan-yia’) 2 times. The first time, I can’t tell you much about it; I don’t remember, as I was only 5. Our infinite amnesia takes away most of our earliest memories, which I’m sure you’re grateful for in some cases (remember your birth? I hope you don’t). 

As of writing this on December 1st, 2025, at 2:32 PM, I had pneumonia recently. Like, literally less than a week ago was when I was discharged from the hospital and sent home. I can’t say that I hated having pneumonia the first time (again, it was 2018, I was 5, and I can’t remember a single thing), but I can say that I hated it the second time.

Let’s start from the beginning: I went to school on Monday, November 17, 2025, like any ordinary school day. When I was there, I started having a painful cough. When I came home, Mom took my temperature. I had a 100 something degree fever. Though it wasn’t technically a fever (just elevated temperature for a Homo sapien (human)), Mom and Dad decided to keep me home just to be safe. 

For the rest of the week (and Saturday, too), I was a couch potato with a fever. My temperature went up and down, but only once or twice actually went lower than a hundred degrees.

Things took a serious turn on Sunday night, 6 days after I originally got sick. Mom turned the shower onto maximum heat in the bathroom, creating lots of steam. Mom told me to sit in the bathroom, and inhale the steam to hopefully clear up my respiratory system. It did anything but. So I sat for 30 minutes on the toilet lid. When I was done, Mom put our pulse oximeter on my finger, and my oxygen levels were at 83. Normal levels are 95-100. It was about 9 PM on the night of November 24, 2025, and that night Mom and Dad drove me across town–our town is not a small town, mind you–to the Emergency Room. 

Nurses got me a room with a bed, a typical hospital gown you’d see on TV, and a blanket. A few hours later (around midnight), doctors diagnosed patient Phinneas (Finn) Posten with mycoplasma pneumonia. 

Mycoplasma pneumonia (mi-coh-pla-zmah new-moan-yia) is bacterial, unlike most kinds of pneumonia, which are usually viral. Normally, MP (mycoplasma pneumonia) is mild and goes away on its own in a few days, but mine was a severe case. When doctors weighed me, I realized then that I had eaten so little in the near week I was sick that I lost eight pounds in body weight. 

The nurses got me a new room, and I slept for the rest of the night. Around 7:30 in the morning the next day, doctors decided to send me to a hospital in Denver, around 60 miles south of my hometown, Fort Collins. 

They at first questioned if they should send me by helicopter to the hospital, as they couldn’t find an available ambulance. But at the last minute, they found an ambulance, and the ambulance crew put me in a more portable bed. 

It was about an hour drive to the hospital. When we got there, they got me a room, and I stayed in that hospital for the remainder of the day. They got me some dinner later–chicken and ketchup, with broccoli and some corn. Let’s just say hospital food is as trash as they say. 

When I was discharged the day after, I was more happy than I had been in God-knows-how-long.

I got home around 4:00 PM on Wednesday, November 27, 2025. I’d been in the hospital for nearly 3 days. 

Some frequently asked questions are: Was pneumonia painful? Physically, a little, mentally, yes. How did you get it? I got it from some other person who had it. Are you contagious anymore as of December 1, 2025? No. Could you have died? Yes, most definitely. 

Thanks for reading!