the pain called shingles pt. 2

after a few days of swelling, the blisters started to weep and/or crust over. on Day 10, the swelling had almost gone. the glands under my jaws were much smaller compared to a few days ago. as you can see, my jaws didn’t look all distorted like Day 8 and the days before.

when i thought i’ve been through thru the worst of shingles, i was wrong.

yes, i looked better than before, but the sleepless nights had just begun. the next few days was a blur. the pain started to become worse and worse. the shooting pain behind my head persisted, but there was a new kind of pain that arised… the face pain.

sometimes, it feels like the right side of my face burns. like it was being toasted or something. there were times that the skin of my face felt like it was being pulled and ripped away from my skull. and there were times i felt like knifes running through my skin, cutting about 1 or 2cm deep into the tissue. it felt weird. and all the teeth on my bottom jaw felt like they’re infected, all at the same time… and to add to that, the right side of my tongue felt like it was covered with cold sores. it was painful even just to drink some water… sometimes i felt so sure that there were new wounds on my face, or the inside of my right cheek, or on my tongue. but i couldn’t even check my tongue because it was painful to open my mouth wide enough to stick my tongue out.

my right ear was another problem. it rang non-stop and sometimes it rang so loud i felt like there was a drill with about 2cm drill bit, making a hole into my head, near my temple, right in front of my ear.

it drove me nuts. and all this pain was happening almost at the same time. when one stopped, another one will fill in the gap right away.

there were two days straight when i didn’t sleep. it felt horrible; staying up on long painful nights, and all i could do was go up and down the stairs to distract myself from the annoyance. i tried drawing and watching TV. i took sleeping pills, but it made things worse because i was so drowsy and exhausted from the pills, but the pain kept me awake. that was one of the worst and longest nights of my life.

apparently, that’s what shingles is all about. crazy pain.

so, what about aina?

supposedly, as the blisters start to weep and dry out, this is the time when i’m most contageous.

according to the doctor, this crusting period was going to take a long time (like another 1-3 weeks). i didn’t believe it at first, but yes… it was true: 2 weeks until all the crust fell out. and the problem was that i’m spreading Chicken Pox.

ari and ari’s mom were in no danger because they’ve had chicken pox in the past. and aina? well… i thought chicken pox is better to get when you were young, right? and with ari’s mom at home, i get more help than i could ask for.

so, when aina had a fever on Thursday night, on my Day 8, we all thought she got the virus. i brought her to the doctor with me. he said, it if was a chicken pox, the blisters would usually show up after two days of fever. he said, usually after two days, the fever goes down a bit and red dots will start to show up.

we went home and waited. just like the doctor said, aina’s fever persisted for two days. on the third day, the fever disappeared, and aina went back to normal. she was so normal that she ate very well and had started to jump around like no sick kid could.

so, on monday, we brought aina back to the doctor, clean with no blister nor fever. and the doc gave her a back-to-school letter. and that was the end of the chicken pox story on aina.

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The Complete Shingles Saga:

• The Pain Called Shingles Part 1
• The Pain Called Shingles Part 2
• The Pain Called Shingles Part 3
• 3.5 Years After Shingles