Question: My father is 72 years old. Diabetic, high blood pressure, has 2 stints. One is in his heart and another in his kidney. They have been in place for 20 years.Since December. he has returned to the hospital almost every 6 week with symptoms of being tired, aches in his body (no specific site), Lungs are congested, cold chills, fever, coughing (pain shoots up to his brain and is severe!). Last time, they drained 22 pounds of fluid off of him in 4 days. Each time, he is diagnosed with pneumonia, given antibiotics and sent home. He feels better and in about 6 weeks, he returns to the hospital.

He has had his prevnar and pneumococcal pneumonia vaccines. They also live on a ranch. Could he have hampa virus or sidocossis? Lyme's or legionnaire's? As far as I know a bronchoscopy has not been done or fluid extracted and cultured to see if it is either bacterial or fungal. Blood work is normal. Infectious disease doctor says he/she can see nothing in the blood work. Shall we throw in whooping cough, too? Could this be a form of a granuloma?