Family Man Librarian

A week ago I started having some sharp pain in my upper back and right shoulder. I shrugged it off as simple muscle pain, maybe from sleeping in my usual twisted position after the kids started piling into the bed with us the night before. (We need a king-size bed; a queen-size bed just doesn’t cut it anymore.) But the pain kept getting worse each day, and on Tuesday, I noticed that it started going down my arm. Wednesday, I went to see my doctor. He thought the pain could be from a pinched nerve in my neck, but then caught site of a small reddish patch of skin on my right inner elbow that had appeared overnight. He diagnosed shingles and dosed me up with medicines including an anti-inflammatory, an anti-viral, and a pain killer. Sure enough, over the next few days my arm, up to my shoulder and down to my wrist, “bloomed” with gross, and painful, splotches of shingles. For a while I was worried that it’d continue up the right side of my face. If anyone who reads this has ever had shingles, you, and only you, will be able to fully sympathize with how difficult they can be to handle. Those who are familiar with scripture might remember Job, one of my favorite characters in the whole Bible, and how he suffered with a painful and irritating skin condition during his time of trials. Was his affliction a form of shingles? If so, I have more sympathy for him now than ever.

It’s been quite a discouraging thing, in all honesty. From what my doctor said and also from what I’ve read about it on the Internet, the occurrence of shingles is somewhat unusual at my age (usually, it hits people who are 50 and over), and it is very likely that it was caused in my case by an immune system that continues to be weak, more than a year after hospitalizations for meningitis and other complications. The burden has been especially heavy for Michele in caring for the kids and all, since I’ve been unable to do much of anything for several days. I love my dear wife so much!