Not Crazy At Last

Since early Friday morning (or was it late Thursday night?) I have been suffering with a strange and mysterious stabbing pain that seemed to travel around the left side of my head like a FEDEX truck on its busy route the night before Christmas. After visiting two doctors on Saturday and the dentist on Monday I took one last chance on the medical community by visiting my "regular" PA, Travis Schelling, this morning. Travis happens to be female who has demonstrated an ability to give me medical advice that has proved to be better in every conceivable way in comparison to several doctors I had visited before taking my first chance with her. I did not know up front on my first visit with Travis that she was a she. However, it did not take me long to find I hit the mother lode and can't think of why I would want to change. In the succeeding years she has been --- ok, back to the story. My symtoms have been odd, puzzling, and at times supernatural. After telling Travis of my symtoms and a short timeline of what had been happening she examined me for a moment or two. All in all it took her about 3 minutes from the time I started my tale to her announcement that I had shingles. I was much relieved to hear that my malady had a name and that I would not need a couple of guys in white coats and a net to escort me to my final resting place in the looney bin. She even took pains to examine my scalp several times and confirm more than once that I had shingles. I think she was more interested in advising me more than once that what she was looking at was in fact shingles. However, she also took pains to tell me that shingles usually affects only one set of connected nerves. Yet, my symtoms were showing I had more than one set of nerves being affected. She also indicated that she had never seen shingles that presented itself in the mouth - my gums and tongue were showing signs of shingles. So my rash was scattered around several different areas of my scalp as well as around the left corner of my mouth. She cautioned me to keep an eye on the appearance of the rash around my eye. Such a rash would mean my eye could be subject to attack by the virus and result in blindness if not acted upon immediately.

So here I sit with two additional medications to go along with the two I got on Saturday from the ER Doc (for pain and discomfort). I have been home after only two hours at work (and the time to visit Travis and get the medications). I will be at home tomorrow as I will be contagious until Wednesday evening. I don't want to scatter my illness around plus it will give me some time to catch up on administrative home matters that have been laying around as a dead cat on the road.

Immediately after leaving Travis I called Nicole, the dentist (to spread the news of my illness), work, and then Alicia to get whatever sympathy she could give while in the midst of dealing with here "students."