Instead of recovering within a few days to a week, your symptoms quickly worsen. In viral pneumonia, you may have a dry, hacking cough with headache, fever, muscle pain, and fatigue. Occasionally, a bacterial infection follows viral pneumonia. Telltale symptoms of bacterial pneumonia are high fever and a cough that produces thick, rusty-colored, greenish, or yellowish sputum. You may also have shaking chills and stabbing chest pains when you breathe.
Pneumonia tends to occur in older adults.
It can be serious, or even fatal, if you have heart or lung disease or conditions that compromise your body's natural defenses. Poor nutrition, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, cancer, alcoholism, and AIDS make you more vulnerable to serious pneumonia. If you're in one of these risk groups, get a one-time vaccination for pneumococcal pneumonia. This immunization prevents pneumonia caused by pneumococcal bacteria, but it doesn't protect you from all pneumonias. If you've had your spleen removed or an organ transplanted, you may need to be immunized every three to six years.