journal features

day 15: mycaplasma

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2009.04.13

So it turns out that in all of the wide world, among countless species of bacteria, we humans have only found one lone species that doesn't have cell walls. I don't pretend to understand how it survives without cell walls, nor do I understand the ramifications for taxonomy or evolutionary theory.

I just want them out of my lungs.

The doctor, when I went back to the clinic today, was surprised to hear that I was still getting daily bouts of fever. He told me the name of the thing that's living in me, and explained that even once the fever was gone I could be suffering with the cough for a month. Not the news I wanted to hear, but then I realized -- I've already been coughing for two weeks, so maybe I'm halfway there! 8)

Now armed with more potent cough-suppressants and more potent antibiotics, I'm ready to have another go at licking this thing. Which, if I'm reading the Wikipedia entry correctly, would seem to be an 'atypical pneumonia' infection.

rand()m quote

If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be crazier than I've been on this trip. I know very few things I'd take seriously any more. I'd certainly be less hygenic... I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd have many more of them, in fact I'd try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel lighter, much lighter than I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and I'd stay that way later in the fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people and pick more flowers and dance more often. If I had it to do all over again - but you see, I don't.

—Jorge Luis Borges