Shingles

The pain comes from everywhere - jabbing into my hip, my belly, spiraling up my side and between my shoulder blades and under one breast.  My entire right side seems to be in melt down.

Booked up, the ill named patient care coordinator tells me indifferently, Next opening is a week from today.

I protest and plead but I might as well be talking to a wall.

Booked up, she says, unmoved and unmovable.

I go back to the massive doses of ibuprofen, not caring in the least whether they produce stress ulcers or internal bleeding - by the third day, they're all that's keeping me sane.  Just to be safe, I look up the symptoms of appendicitis.  That leads nowhere and as unlikely as it seems, I'm back to gas pains.  I hunt around and find a cache of laxatives, contraindicated if you're in pain but I'm willing to take the risk.  The laxative works as predicted but the pain doesn't ease.  At my wits end, I take more ibuprofen and crawl miserably into bed, managing to sleep an hour or two at a time, getting up only to take more.  By Sunday, things have leveled out and as long as I take the ibuprofen every couple of hours, the pain is close to manageable.

Monday morning, having woken to a rash on my side and back and on my way to work or the ER - I haven't quite decided - I pass a family clinic.

Accepting New Patients, a billboard sign proclaims, Sick Today, Seen Today.

Feeling like I have nothing to lose, I pull in.

Amazingly, I've seen within a half hour.  The nurse practitioner takes one look at the rash and reaches for his prescription pad.

Shingles, he says sympathetically.

That's what I thought, I say with a wince, But the rest of the pain?  My back, my hip, my shoulder, my belly?

All shingles, he assures me, It's a bitch.

I explain how I can't quite comprehend that a rash on my side - a rash I didn't even know was there until a few hours before and that isn't particularly bothersome - could be causing such pain in so many unrelated areas.  He explains that shingles is about nerves going a little wild, warns me that it's likely to be worse before it's better, prescribes pain meds and antivirals, tells me to take it one day at a time.  Two days later, I'm still miserable but feeling lucky - the rash, prickly, uncomfortable and painful if I move wrong, doesn't progress to the weeping stage and while the pain is relentless and exhausting, it never gets to excruciating - all in all, it could've been much, much worse.

After the first week, the internal pain recedes but the rash flares and at times seems to set itself on fire.  I dutifully take the regimen of medications, adding ibuprofen when it becomes unbearable.  It takes everything I have just to lie still on the loveseat and try to sleep, anything requiring any more effort is out of the question.
Shingles or not, however, there are cats to be fed, litter boxes to be changed, and dogs to be tended.  I spend a lot of time wishing I had the energy to die.

On the eighth morning, I wake up and make my way to the kitchen to tend the animals and swallow the morning meds.  For the first time in over a week, the pain is manageable.  I can stand straight, think clearly and walk as if I'm not going to break.  For the first time in a week, I don't think about giving up because it's too hard.  I can see the possibility of tomorrow.

Adversity, Albert Einstein wrote, introduces a man to himself.

Maybe so, but having met myself, I don't think I care to know me just now.