Who Knew?

 Life never fails to surprise me.  Just when you think you have lived long enough and had enough experience to sort of know what is going on, life jumps in and smacks you.

My poor daughter started feeling poorly on Thursday evening.  When she picked up the Bean she was complaining of indigestion so, like any devoted and dutiful mother, I directed her to the bottle of antacids and told her to enjoy a few.  It didn’t help.

On Friday the problem was still there and escalating.  She felt less like she had indigestion and more like something she couldn’t describe.  By Saturday she was complaining of full on chest pain.  Sunday morning she was in tears and a lot of pain and she decided she needed to make an appointment with her breast doctor (yes, she has one, recurring issues).  By Sunday afternoon we were in the ER.

So, there we were in a very crowded ER — she is clearly in pain and can’t even sit comfortably because of the pain in her chest and her back and you could tell my poor, little girl was really getting to the end of her tether because it took quite a while to get to her because it was quite crowded in the neighborhood hospital. 

Putting her through the paces she had a chest x-ray and an EKG.  All was fine.  Finally get taken to a room and this very nice doctor comes in and she explains her issues and the time line.  He whips off his stethoscope (by this time I was preparing for her to be admitted) and listens to her and then asked her to lean forward to listen to her back and that is when everything stopped.

She had on a hospital gown that was open down the back and he took one look at her back and said —

“I know exactly what’s wrong with you — you have shingles”.  

I had such a knee jerk reaction I thought I would have whiplash.  

I mean, I had sat up all Saturday night mulling over the possibilities from metastatic breast cancer to heart issues.  I thought about all sorts of lung ailments and even considered that her very loveable but huge dog had somehow damaged her jumping on her.

Shingles.

I almost laughed out loud.  Not because it is funny because it isn’t, it is very painful and lasts a very long time, but because it had never even entered my mind, not on my radar at all.

So, she was given hydrocodone for the pain, a lidocaine gel for the itch and an antiviral to maybe lessen the symptoms.

Now my husband and I are seriously thinking about getting the shingles vaccine.  This doesn’t look like something pleasant to have to deal with.

So, my poor baby was given a doctor’s note, she can’t go back to work until the Tuesday after Labor Day and initially she was all pumped up about that until the realization that being out of her classroom for a week was going to be truly inconvenient.  So, yeah.

AND….last week the school district announced that there was a case of monkey pox in her school.  Seriously?  So, they were cleaning the school.  We mentioned to the doctor that she was in the school making all the headlines and he assured her she had shingles and not monkey pox.

I mean, life never ceases to amaze me.