Well here's way too much information about me and about my life, which I just need to get off my chest!
When I was 14 I got chicken pox and I was
really sick with it for over 2 weeks. It was horrible; wouldn't have wished it on my worst enemy.
Flash forward 12 years. When I was 26 I got what looked like a bad bug bite. Doctors gave me medicine for it, but it didn't go away - it just got worse. Over a week later they realised that it was shingles. Shingles is the same virus as chicken pox, but when it "goes away" it never leaves your body... just goes into hiding in your body. For 1 out of 5 people it randomly comes back later in life as shingles. Here's more info about exactly what it is - more than you raelly want to know:
Shingles: An Unwelcome Encore
Okay so I had shingles for 13 weeks. It usually lasts a max of 5 weeks and is commonly known as something "old people get"... over 50% of cases are in people over 50 years, and the older a person gets the higher the liklihood of getting it. So not only was I 26 years old, getting an "old person" sickness, and it lasted over double the length of time it normally does, and the liklihood of a recurrence of shingles is super low at maybe 1-5%, BUT...
Last night I noticed an "odd" bug bite on my left hip and it suddenly struck me: "Eek - get to a doctor quick! Just in case!" I could be a total hypochondriac, but last time it took so long to diagnose it that the usual medications to make it better didn't work. You have to take those with in 3 days or they don't do much.... argh! So I raced to the doctor this morning and basically got a response of "Considering your history and your obvious weakness to this virus; better safe than sorry" and he gave me an Rx. Ironically, it's the same medication given to people who have genital herpes, since chicken pox actually is a form of herpes. So the pharmicist was looking at my face as she was saying 'This drug is commonly used to treat cold sores...' and I explain that it's shingles - again. <sigh>
Argh - how the heck does this happen?!? Insanity. Then I have to explain myself to parents since I could give their kids chicken pox! We're visiting some friends of ours and their young kids on a private island this weekend and I really don't want to have to try to explain how I don't have a creepy weird disease; just chicken pox raised from the dead.
Anyone else here ever have shingles? Am I the only weird one who can't seem to deal with a 'common' childhood illness?! Blah!
The Cafe
08-10-06, 04:08 pm
