Yes, I am off my blogging... largely because I have been sick for the past two weeks. Initially I thought it was the onset of my seasonal allergies, so I started to kick my medication into high gear. After a couple of days, my sore throat continued to get worse, so I went and got a strep test. It came back positive. That was a week ago. I took a nap and woke to notice a kind of abrasion just below where my bra strap would be on my side. I thought maybe I had some sort of reaction to the metal of the underwire, not anything that had happened before, but I could think of what else would have caused such a weird reaction. By the middle of the week, it had developed into a full blown rash and was blistering. I had no idea what was going on.
Wednesday night I woke to shooting pains through essentially the same location of the rash. I didn't sleep well at all for the rest of the night, really bad since some of the medication I take is suppose to help with that. Thursday morning, I googled shingles, saw the picture, ran to the school nurse in a panic. Once I was deemed non-contagious, I went through the rest of my day waiting for the 3pm doctor's appointment. I was educated on shingles (the stuff I hadn't read on the internet in the previous hours), loaded up with antivirals and Vicodan and sent on my way. Normally, when I am given pain pills like Vicodan or Percocet, even after the c-sections or the surgery in December, I take them a day or two and them I done. I am starting day four. I am conservative with taking them, but the fact that I take them during them day freaks me out. The pain from the nerve is unrelenting. The rash is healing, but I have been told that the pain can last for weeks or months.
When I was a kid, I had an epic case of chicken pox. When I was at the Kaiser hospital in California, they gathered the interns to display me when I came in to show them what a bad case looked like - at the time, I had them in places that they were unusual. Mercifully, I don't remember the details. From my understanding, shingles is being kinder to me (no face, no eyes), but it is relative. I am just relieved that my boys both were vaccinated against the chicken pox so they won't experience the joys of either. For all the debate over the vaccines and autism, right now, as I am suffering very painfully and I look at Jimmy and know, in my heart that for him, vaccines were not the genesis of
his autism. I am glad I vaccinated both boys and the illness that I am suffering through now, even though it is mild in comparison to what it could be, is something that they will never know.
