Sorry to go on and on about it but this is actually a blessing because I trusted my instinct and learned what to do, and didn't get any worse because I did get the help I needed.

I'm glad it worked out well and you got the care you needed. It sounds like they did respond pretty well once you got their attention. You might make a follow-up appointment to be sure your pneumonia is resolving well and to meet this doc. You can ask for antibiotics and pred to have on hand and see how she responds. When my pulmo left (he went where his wife's parents were and wouldn't stay here for me. I'm still mad at him!) the new guy made the same deal with me: if I started an antibiotic, I would call him to let him know what was going on, and then he'd okay it. They really just want to keep track of what's going on with us, and that's a good thing. I hope you can make the same deal with this new pulmo.

That's too bad about Kaiser and not consistent with what I hear about them other places; maybe CA is just an anomaly. If they don't insist that you communicate via email, I would always call and ask to speak with the nurse or RT who works with them. In my doc's office, if I do that I almost always get a call back in a couple of hours, I can explain my situation, what I'm doing, what I have on hand and ask what more should I do. I always get a call back with instructions I can follow. They rarely ask me to come in (because I've been a patient of theirs for a long time), usually I get a "continue what I'm doing and call back if anything changes negatively" response. I also always have antibiotics and prednisone on hand (the last time I needed to take prednisone they did have to get me a new prescription because what I had was seven years old!). If you can get them to do that with you, you'll be good to go.

The gunk and congestion is the flare-up; that's when you need to see or talk with your pulmonologist to avoid getting the pneumonia. If you really start paying attention to how you feel, what your breathing is like, are you coughing more, or producing any mucus with the cough, how you're sleeping, what food tastes like and probably a bunch more things, you should begin to pick up on the early warning signs. You want to avoid getting pneumonia because that's when you can do more lung damage you can't recover from. So if you get anything that feels remotely like a respiratory thing, get to your doc ASAP and get treated.

Thanks Jean. It's just that Kaiser dropped the ball and you are absolutely right that I should have called and did start calling on Friday morning. Doctors have 48 hours to get back to you with a reply to an email, and then all offices close for the weekend. When I called for advice they all said to go to the ER. My primary sent an order for an x-ray to do Sat morning and a prescription for antibiotics and armed with that I contacted advice and got a 2:30 phone appointment for Sat afternoon. That doc confirmed pneumonia and added a second antibiotic.