I had Valley Fever pneumonia 20 yrs ago (and my sister died of Valley fever 8 yrs ago) so that was my first thought, too. But when I got it, the first pulmonary guy missed it, the second literally looked at me and my chest Xray for maybe 45 sec and said 'here's what you have, how the hell could they miss it?' They missed my sister's case and gave her prednisone for 'asthma' (which she'd never had) and by the time they figured out what she really had, the steroids had suppressed her immune system just enough that the cocci went systemic. That said, I was told by my doc that the skin test they start out with sometimes doesn't show positive for awhile. Also that it's still in there, and I have to be very careful about ever going on high-dose or long-term oral steroids (I'm on prednisone this very moment for an allergy, and it makes me nervous as heck.) or anything else that lowers resistance.
If Conor has had it this badly, he very well could be out for months -- I couldn't return to full time work for probably 8-10 weeks, because the damn disease makes you so exhausted and sleepy even after the worst of it's over.
