Good news/Bad news? Good news is I don't have a local recurrence of cancer. Bad news is I have shingles!
So yes, I'm informing you after I started to suspect something was not cool, but only by a day. There was this weird, itchiness on my chest (R side where the radiation had been) that started yesterday and turned into a blister. Wasn't acting like a bug bite or anything, though it was pretty small (~1cm). Anytime there's something weird with my skin in that area, my mind jumps to conclusions--it's only happened one other time that I had a tiny lump near my scar, but it must have been more scar tissue changes and went away. So that's a fun thing to be paranoid about for the rest of my life. I'm in the I-know-just-enough-to-make-me-crazy stage with my nursing background, but I hadn't gone to the shingles page yet.
For those of you who don't know, shingles are the exact same virus as chicken pox, so people that have had it can have the same virus pop up as shingles years later. It can come out of nowhere, but tend to show up more when someone's immunity is lower (i.e. after chemo). I caught mine early, literally a day after it started, so i start antiviral meds today and it should clear up within a week. If you don't start the med early you can have lifelong nerve pain at the site, so fast action is good. (By the by, kudos to my radiation oncologist & nurse for hearing my description and sneaking me in this afternoon!) It can always come back, but whatever. One possible not fun thing to worry about for the week--Ben never had chicken pox as a kid and could catch it now, and it's always more nasty as an adult...
Don't mind me, I'll just crawl back in my bubble.
1 comment:
Ben did have chick pox at 9.5 mos--quite a bad case...it spanned my first real Mother's Day and I remember having a few tears while I sat on the floor with him crawling around diaperless to let that area and all the pox that clustered there dry a bit. He crawled over and patted my hand, trying to cheer me up.
Jared was exposed many times and didn't seem to catch 'em...he did catch it though in 4th grade and he was REALLY sick.
It's good you caught it early...shingles can be very bad. So much better than cancer tho. Do you know how you got exposed?
Take care...don't itch!!
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