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I'm very sorry to hear that you've been through all of that. As of now, the Drs are saying I should make a full recovery but it will take about a year in total. I have some scar tissue in my left lung, they believe it shouldn't cause further issues. With blastomycosis, it enters the body in the form of fungal spores, but when it actually starts to grow in the lungs, it is in the form of yeast. It is very slow growing, so sometimes symptoms won't show until months later. Unfortunately it is also very slow to heal and eradicate. I will be on an antifungal pill 6 times a day for a year.

Thank you guys very much! It's been a crazy ride for sure. There were a couple of positives from it. I got to skip a whole month of summer, closer to fall and winter! And I lost 90 lbs, which resolved my diabetes. I've gained about 40 lbs back from muscle and a better appetite. I don't recommend my signature weight loss program though lol

I've been meaning to make a post on this topic for awhile, but never got around to it. It will probably be a long read, just a warning lol. Back in late May I started getting what I felt like was a cold. I had a rattling feeling deep in my lungs when I would breathe in deep. I went to the local urgent care on a Monday. I asked for blood work or an X-ray. They thought it was just a sinus infection and wrote out antibiotics. I wasn't satisfied with that, so the next day I went to the ER. It was very busy and the doctor pretty much brushed it off. They too thought it was a sinus infection,no blood work or X-ray, even though I had asked a couple of times. On the next day which was Wednesday, I went to my regular Doctor. She was out for the day so I saw the nurse practitioner. Same story as before, sinus infection. They gave me a steroid shot and an antibiotic shot. So I just accepted that after seeing three different medical professionals, I would just take the antibiotics and everything would clear up. Thursday night I started getting severe pains in my upper and right side abdomen. I didn't think much about it. The next day the pain had subsided for the most part during the day. Later that day, the pains hit me even harder than before, so I decided to go back to the ER. This time they did an X-ray and blood work. The nurse came in and said the blood test had shown signs of pancreatitis. After waiting another hour or so the Dr finally came to talk to me. It was the same Dr from the days before. He apologized when he came in. He said you are a very sick young man. I had pancreatitis and pneumonia. They had also spotted a large mass on my upper left lung. He had told me that they needed to send me out to a better facility. They tried to transport me to Johnson City, but there were no beds available. I ended up going to Pikeville Medical Center. By the time I am transported by ambulance it's around 2am. They start me on antibiotics for my pneumonia. By the next day the pancreatitis had cleared up. I didn't even have pain from it anymore. As a few days go by the pneumonia slowly starts getting worse. The Drs have me on broad spectrum antibiotics at this point. After being hospitalized for over a week, nothing had changed. Of course I start asking questions and ask if it could be a different form of pneumonia given the antibiotics aren't working. They say of course there could be a possibility but the chances are pretty rare, most of the time it's bacterial. A day after I ask these questions they decide to do a bronchoscopy. They do the procedure but will take a few days to get results. The night of the operation, I noticed it's getting harder for me to catch my breath. They crank the oxygen up as high as it goes in the hospital room. The next day they do an X-ray and the mass is growing. They start talking about the possibility of doing a biopsy. Things started spiraling downhill pretty fast after the X-ray. The Dr comes in and says they are going to move me to ICU, but won't do life support at first. No one had mentioned anything about things being to that severity so my family and I are all in shock and worried. We start asking questions trying to figure out why they were taking me to ICU. The Dr really didn't give much of an explanation. I definitely noticed my breathing was getting much worse. By the time they took me to ICU, I was on a very large amount of oxygen. Eventually putting me on a CPAP machine. That night I start running a fever. It was around 102 to 104. They weren't able to keep it as low as they wanted. The next day they put me on a ventilator and decided at this point it's best to put me in a medically induced coma on life support to take some of the pressure off of my lungs to heal. They put me to sleep. That was on June 6th. I wake up on July 4th, completely out of it. Had no idea where I was or what was going on. My mother and fiance were by my side, smiling, crying and hugging each other. I try to talk, but nothing is happening. My mother asks if I know where I am. I shook my head no. I was at UK hospital in Lexington KY. They had made the decision to fly me out to Lexington on June 9th. My fever was out of control, it was 107.5 when I arrived at UK. Before I left Pikeville they had found that the pneumonia was fungal. They were treating me for the wrong fungus. They had diagnosed me with Histoplasmosis. UK had determined that I had a fungal infection called Blastomycosis. Several days after arriving at UK, they put me on ECMO. The best way I can describe it is sort of like blood dialysis. It filters all of the blood to 100% oxygenation, giving the lungs a chance to rest and hopefully heal. ECMO is a last resort. The procedure itself has only 50% survival rate. I had went into A fib during ECMO, so I had to be laid prone for either 16 hours on stomach and 8 on back, or vice versa. My survival chance between ECMO and Blastomycosis was at 30%. I was on it for 2 weeks, and gradually started to heal. By the time I woke up, I couldn't move anything. I had Critical Illness myopathy. I was still on the ventilator and had a trach in as well. After weaning me off the hard medicines I started slowly realizing the severity of my situation. I stay in ICU until August 1st. Then I get moved 2 doors down which is out of ICU. Because of the ECMO, I had a fistula where the cannula was inserted in my right groin. I had surgery August 4th to correct the fistula and a pseudo aneurysm. The surgery site gets infected. I start running a fever again, so they do a washout on August 21st. After that, there is still signs of infection so they do a second washout on the 25th. 3 surgeries in 3 weeks! They put a wound vac in to help heal the site. They found the infection to be CRE. It's an infection that targets weaker immune systems in hospitals. The doctor informed me it is a very serious infection that can lead to heart problems, brain infections and meningitis. At this point I'm just ready to go home. They put me on a 6 week antibiotic. One of the strongest made. 3 times a day, each bag cost around $600. Very powerful stuff. Of course with it being so powerful, it has a slew of side effects and is very dangerous itself. The whole time I'm in UK, they work with me in physical therapy. It wasn't much at all but enough to get me a bit more independent. My insurance wouldn't accept me into any acute rehab facilities. Thankfully the wonderful people at UK set me up with a scholarship at Cardinal Hill rehab hospital in Lexington. I was there for a little over 2 weeks. I finally got to come home on October 13th. I'm doing physical and occupational therapy 3 times a week. I'm in a wheelchair for now, can walk short distances on a walker. I'm slowly regaining my strength, but still have a long road ahead. One thing I have learned from this experience is all of the small things I have taken for granted. In the snap of a finger everything can change. The doctors think I contracted blastomycosis from black mold spores. I was renovating my bedroom and the wall below the air conditioner in my room was starting to rot. I had only discovered it a couple of weeks before I got sick. Blastomycosis affects 1 in 100,000 people and can get it from soil, rotting wood and trees. I had diabetes prior to contracting blastomycosis, so it made everything much worse. Thank you all for reading this. I just wanted to share my story. So if I don't get to share any snow photos this year, that's the reason. I still have windows, so if we get a good storm, I'll definitely share those!

I had some decent snow showers move through this morning, but no accumulation.

Decent snow shower here this morning. What a nice surprise.

Just took this picture on my deck. Maybe a good sign for this coming winter, if you believe in the old folklore.

I can remember watching the weather channel as a very young child. Probably 3 or 4, some of my earliest memories. I was amazed at how the weather could change on a dime, and how everyone is affected by the weather. We moved in our new big house in Oct 92. The property was really big for a young boy. I was 7 when the 93 blizzard hit. That storm had a major impact on my love for weather. I had experienced snow before, but not on that level. I was amazed at how it just shut everything down. Almost as if I was in a different world. That Saturday afternoon my brother and I met up with a few other neighborhood kids and had an absolute blast. Riding inner tubes down hillsides, snow ball fights and we built an awesome snow igloo, enough for 3 of us to fit into. That evening as it got darker, the wind slowed but the snow continued to fall. The complete silence and the snow weighing the trees and power lines was nothing I had ever witnessed, almost eerie, but I loved it. I will never forget it. I've been a freak over weather, especially winter weather ever since. On the warmer side of weather, my first real experience was in third grade. I was at school, I remember going to the gym, which was outside and separate from the school. That was around 11 that morning. There were a few clouds but nothing out of the ordinary. After 45 minutes to an hour later, as the teacher walked us back to the main building, the sky was an ominous color. A greenish/purple hue hung overhead in very low fast moving clouds. It was frightening to me. We got back to the classroom and an announcement came over the speaker for the teachers to get ready for a tornado "test". My teacher actually drug the TV out and put it on the weather channel. As I had watched it for years leading up to this moment, I understood more than most kids that age. It was not a pretty sight. A line of severe storms was moving in very close to the area. As the siren sounded for our drill, the power started flickering as we made our way into the hallway. They made us all get against the wall, hunker down and put our hands over our head. I knew it was serious because the older kids who were on the second floor all came down to the first floor. After a few seconds of being in the hands over head position, the power went completely out. Thunder crashed so hard it shook the ground below us. I remember the wind smashing rain and hail into the window to the lower end of the hall. To make it worse the older kids were teasing the younger kids that were scared. A huge tree limb crashed into the window and broke a bunch of glass out of it. After that, there was silence. The older kids were now scared out of their minds, a long with some of the staff. Things eventually cleared up, but for the rest of that day there were multiple severe storms and tornado warnings issued for the area. After that, I was absolutely terrified of thunderstorms for a couple of years. As I got older that fear turned into fascination. Those two events as a young kid stuck with me and made my love for weather very real. Sorry for the novel lol. I start talking about past weather events and never shut up.

The December 18-19 2009 storm was one of my all time favorites. Of course the 3 week period of no power or water wasn't very fun. I was a child during 93 and 96 blizzards, so it was cool to experience 09 as an adult. I would love for my children to experience a storm like that. It was magical to me as a child.

The school my daughter's attend is closed today due to a fire behind it. It's been bad for about five days now in this area.

Thank you for the link. This storm is single handedly responsible for my obsession with winter weather, arguably weather as a whole. I was 8 years old and my family and I were without power and "snowed in" for about 4 days. I mostly remember spending as much time as possible outside with my brother and neighborhood kids in a winter wonderland. We had the time of our lives playing out in the blizzard, then thawing out by our wood and coal stove, which was our only source of heat, light and cooking at the time. I've been chasing that storm ever since. Of course the chances of that happening again are super slim to almost none, it's still fun to track these storms and dream a little from time to time.

I agree 100%. I don't post much, as I really don't have much to offer other than obs when necessary, but I feel like I've been searching years to find a place that appreciates and educates on something I'm extremely passionate about, which of course is weather. This is for sure the right place. Multiple times a day I find myself coming here and hoping some sort of big post is put up explaining this and that, as I try to soak it all in. I've wanted to be a meteorologist all my life, unfortunately certain circumstances steered life in other directions. I just want to say thank you guys so much for everything you put into this forum, it is greatly appreciated. Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this. Felt Jeds post gave me the opportunity to share that with you guys.

Thanks man, not looking so bad there either. As snow starved as things have been, I'll take this and run with it

A picture of the mountains across from my house. Very pretty this morning.

Got a bit more than yesterday. It was coming down pretty hard for a solid 2 hours earlier.

Got a bit more than I expected. This may very well be the most we've received here this season.

Went to Grundy earlier and it was coming down hard, visibility was awful. Nothing was sticking to the ground at that time though. On my way back home the mountain tops are completely covered, it's just now starting to stick to the vehicles down in the lower elevations.

It is an adjustment

LOL, I agree with @BlunderStorm, us most northern forum guys missed the action on this one, but Im very happy to see so many people did well with this "non event"

Omg, the winds are absolutely ripping right now, I've never seen winds like this

I'm just across the Stateline here in Big Rock and the rain is crazy right now

The rain is pretty heavy here right now, the wind is starting to pick up more. There are 2 VDOT trucks parked across from my house ready to go. Doubt it will help much lol.

My temp 2 hours ago was 42, as of 30 minutes ago went up to 44, the sprinkles started, but now the rain is coming down pretty good. The wind has just started as well, and it definitely has a bite to it.

That definitely makes a lot of sense. When I was younger and less educated I would get so frustrated because it always seemed like it took a miracle to get snow here. My dad always assured me that it can't snow in (the underworld) to put it PG

I literally just looked at the GFS right before I saw your post!! It's kind of a real thing here sometimes sadly

Once again the GFS marches right back into Weenieville USA this past run