Family Man Librarian » Shingles

Seven years

Steve — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:26:28 +0000

It is hard for me to believe that today marks our seventh wedding anniversary. Sometimes it seems like time has flown by, and at other times, it seems like we’ve been married for longer than seven years. We are really blessed. Some of the events of the past seven years include the following:

three more children (Keegan was eight years old when we married)
three household moves
the death of my father
my mother-in-law’s hospitalization and long recovery from dilated cardiomyopathy, as well as a later surgery to replace both of her knees
the death of both of Michele’s grandfathers
the death of one of Michele’s uncles as well as two uncles and an aunt of mine
the legal adoption of Keegan as my son
Michele’s extended neurological illness (which has since reoccurred)
my hospitalizations for meningitis and other weird ailments including a severe case of the shingles
purchase of two different minivans, and the sale of a car and one of those minivans
the adoption of three dogs, two parakeets, several kittens, and several freshwater fish
three job changes on my part
three graduate courses taught
more than 15 emergency room visits
thousands of miles traveled to/from relatives and one plane trip as a family (to Maine)
the purchase of two Mac computers
several business trips made by me, including a trip to Sweden, two trips to the UK, and trips to various parts of the U.S.
several other funerals and marriages of friends
the marriages of a niece and a nephew

I’m surely forgetting some other important milestones, but this list covers a lot as it is. Happy anniversary to us!

I wish I could say I am all better

Steve — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:13:31 +0000

It’s been several weeks since I wrote my last posting. In that intervening time I have tried to cope with shingles. I wish I could say I am all better now, more than a month later. I’m not. I think I am slowly getting better but the pain is still present and sometimes it gets to be more than I can handle. I go to see my doctor again on Thursday so we’ll see what he has to say. This experience has been so discouraging.

Shingles hell, shingles hell, shingles all the way…

Steve — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:19:41 +0000

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!