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I nearly died of double bronchial pneumonia at the age of five.

I was a sickly child, contracting tuberculosis at the age of five.

When I was 11, I spent eight months in the hospital with rheumatic fever and almost died.

During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse's office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same.

Pneumonia is a disease that often flies under the radar of not just the public but even the global health community. It kills more children under 5 years old every year than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

I had asthma when I was a kid, asthma so bad that it would turn into pneumonia and I almost died several times. Nobody knew why back then, but now it's obvious.

I dropped out of school in the 11th grade because there was no purpose in it for me. I'm not proud of this, and I'm not trying to promote it.

I hated school, didn't like the discipline.