About the same time I noticed three crazy bumps on my shoulder. I thought they were a weird cluster of pimples or just massive mosquito bites. Neither being an odd thing.
I went to work with my aching head and my tender 'pimples', got through my day, came home and spent the evenings lying on the couch, staring in the direction of the TV/wall, not speaking the whole evening.
The second day I asked Maya to have a look at my 'pimples' because they were really sore. I still had not connected them to my raging headache (now on day two). She did.
She said they looked funny. She said I should get them checked out. She said they were black on the inside. That sounded pretty strange, but they were on my shoulder blade so I couldn't really look at them.
Maya took a picture with the camera phone and, she was right, they were black. My first thought was maybe that it was some kind of mosquito-bite cum staph infection, knowing how prone I am to staph infections, but none of the other tell-tell signs of a staph infection were visible. No funny red lines tracing the path of my lymph system. No swelling. No puss bubbles.
I decided it wasn't staph and that maybe my backpack strap had scraped off the tops of the bites/pimples and the black dots in the center of them were just some kind of weird internal scab.
Not so lucky.
I also found it weird that I was developing another, very similar, cluster of odd looking bite-type things on my right tricep. Coincidence? I thought so. There are lots of mosquitoes in Thailand and I didn't have to think very hard before I decided that having similar bite patterns was probably not that odd of an occurrence.
Man, am I dumb.
Today was weird again. I woke up with the same intense headache I had gone to bed with, but that wasn't what was strange. I had been waking up with the same headache for a couple of days now. What was strange was that it felt like the back of my arm had been bruised, it was very tender and very sore.
My first thought was that I had possibly tried to deliver the 'flying elbow of vengence' to Maya at some point in the middle of the night to punish her, for unfailingly taking the blanket all the way over to the other side of the bed, and missed...possibly hitting the night stand instead but still failing to actually wake myself up. I decided not to ask Maya in case I might incriminate myself.
So, the soreness persisted in my arm and about half way through the day I felt the bruise spreading into my shoulder, down my arm, down my back and through my ribs. Still no visible signs of infection (bacterial, that is) I finally linked my raging headache to the funny thing on my back, though. I became intensely aware that the pulsing headache had roots under those crazy three black dots on my shoulder blade.
Headache persisting and invisible bruise growing, Maya began insisting. Go to a clinic, Brett. Go to a clinic, Brett. Go to a clinic, Brett.
I was stubborn. No. No. No. No.
Maya said, Are you ready? Let's go!
I said, O.K.
We went to the office of our building and asked for the closest clinic. Suphab, the matron of the building and, as it turns out, the neighborhood, was curious about why I was seeking out a clinic. I told her that I was afraid I had some kind of infection and wanted to get some things checked out. She gave us directions to the neighborhood clinic.
We got there. It wasn't open. We called back to the office of our building. Suphab suggested I had herpes. I winced. Herpes is bad and I couldn't think of anything that I had done that would warrant me breaking out in herpes on my shoulder blade and arm.
She came and picked us up and took us to the hospital.
Turns out it was herpes.
A better way to describe it might be like a muted case of the chicken pox.
Otherwise known as shingles. This is what wikipedia has to say on the subject:
Herpes zoster (or simply zoster), commonly known as shingles, is a viral diseaseblisters in a limited area on one side of the body. The initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV) causes the acute (short-lived) illness chickenpox, and generally occurs in children and young people. Once an episode of chickenpox has resolved, the virus is not eliminated from the body but can go on to cause shingles—an illness with very different symptoms—often many years after the initial infection.
Varicella zoster virus can become latent in the nerve cell bodies and less frequently in non-neuronal satellite cells of dorsal root, cranial nerve or autonomic ganglion,[1] without causing any symptoms.[2] In an immunocompromised individual, perhaps years or decades after a chickenpox infection, the virus may break out of nerve cell bodies and travel down nerve axonssegment and infect the corresponding dermatome[3][4] Although the rash usually heals within two to four weeks, some sufferers experience residual nerve pain for months or years, a condition called postherpetic neuralgia. Exactly how the virus remains latent in the body, and subsequently re-activates is not understood.[1]
If you can't read that because I have made it way too small, here is the link to the page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_zoster.
That's my story for the week. I am currently on a program of skin ointment and antiviral pills that should keep me busy for the next seven days. Maya wants me to let you all know that she is too lazy to write her own post, so she wants me to tell you all that she got thrown up on, all over her lap, today. She knows it isn't as bad as shingles...but it is much smellier.
