OK, OK. I confess. Everybody I caved with, drank with, or hung out with at NCRC got sick.
Apparently I'm actually Typhoid Bill.
But seriously, I am still coughing and suffering from respiratory issues that began at the Mentone seminar. I believe that someone brought a respiratory illness to Mentone and gave it to a bunch of us. Quite a few people have been sick with it, and some were also sick with a 24-hour GI bug during the seminar. I guess that is not too surprising when you consider that 150 people from all over the country were thrown into close contact on a daily basis for more than a week, while working hard and getting minimal sleep. If anyone has a cold or something it's bound to spread around in that kind of situation. Still, I am going to go get tested for TB, Histo (already have positive test from decades of caving, but it has been shown that a substantial exposure can result in infection even for people who have previous exposure), and whatever else they can think to check (Hantavirus? Apergillosis? X-Files Black Oil Alien virus?). I hope we do not all wind up as the subjects of a massive CDC epidemiological investigation.
If it sheds any light on all this, here's my story: I came down with what I thought at the time was a massive hay fever reaction to the pollen at the seminar site. It started mid-week, and by Thursday I had suffered enough and went by a pharmacy in Valley Head to get some Claritin. That helped with the sneezing and congestion, but I was still pretty sick and skipped most of the mock rescue on Friday to sleep in and try to recover.
I felt better Friday night and Saturday, until I got into the water crawl in Sinking Cove Saturday afternoon and realized that I was way low on energy and endurance. The short crawl sans-wetsuit was enough to put me into mild hypothermia, and I ran the heater in the truck all the way to Stevenson but still felt cold. Some hot coffee and hot food fixed that, but the drive back to Mentone seemed endless, and I crashed soon after the obligatory post-cave debriefing session.
Sunday was a journey through Hell just to get back to Atlanta, featuring chills, nausea, and repeated fits of cough-until-you-retch. As soon as I got home I crashed big time. Other symptoms suggested a sinus infection so it was off to the pharmacy for 10 days worth of Amoxycillin, which eventually changed the drainage from green to clear. A bottle of Delsym and another of prescription codine cough syrup got me through the week, but I still coughed until I felt like my abdomen had been someone's punching bag. Weeks later I am still plagued by a nagging cough that just won't go away. My wife and kids apparently caught whatever I had and developed most of the same symptoms, though not as severe as mine (probably due to my stressed immune system). They are still coughing, too.
I'm finishing up a week at the beach and I'm still coughing intermittently, especially at bedtime. Now that I've read all this info from other victims (patients?) it's clearly time to call the doc tomorrow and get in for a chest X-ray and more diagnostic tests. I'm headed fro Lechuguilla in less than a month, and this nonsense has got to stop.
"Typhoid" Bill Putnam