Mental Health Day

I was put in mind of something this morning that I thought I could blog about.  It was going to be a really insightful and well-written piece (unlike the posts below, no doubt) and then I got in the car and it all drained out.  "There are," as Phyllis Diller said, "no excuses but there are plenty of reasons."  Apparently, the rickets  hives  rieslings  hanggliders   [damn!]  shingles have odd effects on the brain.  These effects are supposed to disappear along with the rash and I was reassured that it was not dementia.

I don't recall mentioning dementia to the doctor.  Now I wonder what I sounded like to him.  I have had trouble remembering vocabulary for quite a while.  I always have to ask my husband for a word that I'm stuck on.  I started blaming menopause for that after the "I've taken too many foreign languages" excuse wore out.  Could have used this shingles excuse all the past year.

I'm having trouble writing and I've lost interest in reading.  I've been having my husband read to me from some book he's reading, which probably annoys him by slowing him down.  Cats are banned from the bedroom for now.  All of this because I have ... shingles.

I blame my co-worker, Shannon.  We had a lovely day together at the YMCA being ignored by hundreds of children (even the fire truck was being ignored) and chatted about stuff.  Shannon has been struggling with kidney stones.  By Sunday afternoon, I was having back pains.  Husbob and I were on our way to Greenville for dinner and I started to squirm in the seat.  Well, that's typical.  I am never comfortable in that car.  Why I think I can ride in it to Arizona and back is anybody's guess.  I still hurt on Monday, so I went to the chiropractor and got a crunching.   That night it became apparent that the pain was not the usual back pain that you can find a comfortable position to relieve, if temporarily.  It was squeezing and squeezing.  I started counting seconds between squeezes.  It never got higher than 14.

So, Tuesday I went to the doctor and tests determined that I had a kidney infection.  I was given a prescription but blubbed when they tried to give me a shot.  Oh no.  Stab me all over for blood as much as you want, but I had enough of the morphine shots when I had my accident.  Nasty they are, painful.  I was numb in my "hips" for two years after that and still cower at the dentist office.  At least I have stopped crying at the dentist's.  And I turned down the offer of some prescription pain meds because the last ones made me itch all over.  [I called in to say I thought I was having an allergic reaction to the pain meds and they unhelpfully told me to "take some Benadryl."  I slept for a week.]

Wednesday, there were some red bumps on my abdomen.  Husbob thought I was having another allergic reaction.  I thought it might be poison ivy, which takes a few days to crop up and I might have touched something in our yard (Poison Ivy Central), although I had no memory of doing any yard work that weekend.  By Saturday, it had spread seriously and I called the pharmacist to see what she said about it and she thought the likelihood was good that it was a reaction.  So I have to get the doctor-on-call and he phones in a new antibiotic prescription that I picked up 10 minutes before they closed for the weekend.

That was just as well.  The first antibiotic was a nightmare of "don't take at the same time as calcium" and Husbob had to remind me when I could take what.  I'm on extra calcium after losing half my para-thyroids.  Two hours before or six hours after.  This is like math, man.  As the days wore on, and pain seemed to be all over that area and not just the squeezing kind, a new word popped into my head: hinges  shingles.  Damn!  So I looked that up online.  Monday morning I called the doctor and went in again.  And that's what they were: shingles.  So, this is a case of the shingles.  Well, well.  Lalalalalalalalaaa.

There is no way we can drive out west if I can't get in a swimming pool (I'm told the chlorine would be very painful) and the heat (I remember 115 degrees in Phoenix, AZ in May) would make this unbearable.  Also, the antibiotic makes one sun-sensitive.  No point in going 3,000 miles just to sit in a dark motel room.  So,  now our vacation has been put off about a week.  [This is just as well.  We're such slack planners.]

I'm existing on acetaminophen, hydrocortizone, antivirals and I'm doing okay.  There is still discomfort, but this isn't anything like the kidney business, which must have gotten better already.  I have a Get Out of Wateraerobics Free card I've deployed, but I'll have to return to the fitness center with one that says I can go back.

Noted since: Although I thought I was feeling pretty well yesterday, today I am in a lot of pain. Now I need to develop some sort of vest to wear with those frozen gel inserts because it is helping a bit to have a sack of chilly water wrapped in a tea towel on the affected area.   Thanks to everyone for their sympathy!