The Cellar - Shingles

momwolf has shingles.

Actualy, she has real bad shingles.

They actually popped out (which is what they literally do, rather like chicken pox) last weekend.

If you haven't had shingles, it sucks.

You can get shingles if you have had chicken pox, which lurks in your nervous system and waits until you're immunocompromised, or under stress, or they just want to fuck with you, and wham.

You feel miserable for a day, and then you look like you have plague.

They find a handy nerve root and emerge and make your life a living hell for a couple of weeks.

I know this, because I had them two years ago, related to stress from momwolf's summer of hospitalization, surgery, and eventual nursing home discharge. I probably wrote about them at the time.

I took her to her PCP on Monday, got a couple of prescriptions and an emergency eye doctor visit because the nerve root they picked crosses her eye. I stayed home from work to make sure that she was getting the meds (Valtrex and Prednisone) into her and to keep an eye on her. All went well, except that she was screaming every couple of minutes from the pain.

Tuesday, she seemed a little wobbly, but overall was okay. I went to work.

Bad idea.

I had to leave work after about two hours, because when I checked up on her she has slid through wobbly right into loopy. Disoriented, hallucinating ... figured it was probably the Prednisone. The ambulance guys noticed I looked a little distressed and offered to follow me home and check her out for me.

They loaded her straight into the ambulance and off to the ER we went.

It was a pretty good ER visit, competent nurse, nervous medical student, and good doctor ... they worked her up including labs, chest x-ray and a CT scan. Oh, and we were back home in UNDER THREE HOURS. I've never seen that. Ever.

They figured it was the prednisone, but suggested adding a second med my mother has never had to try to control the side effects rather than just discontinuing it. Screw that. No more prednisone.

Well, now it's two days later and she's still delirious. Could be the prednisone, or it could be a reaction to the dilaudid they shot her up with in the ER. It's some major good stuff, and they only gave her 0.5 mg, and she did sleep quite well ... but it could have contributed to the goofiness.

I haven't been able to go back to work. She's not safe alone.

I pretty much know I'm not going anywhere when I she wakes up screaming my name at 0800 hrs.

I'm getting frustrated, and running out of reasons not to kill her.

That's a joke. I will not injure or kill momwolf.

I will hook the PS2 up and bash some monsters before I get there.

My biggest fear at this point is that I will not be able to have my actual vacation (Disneyworld, already paid for), since the time I'm taking off to care for her comes out of my vacation days. I need to talk to HR to see if I can have this charged off out of my sick time? Anybody know the regulations on that?

Anyway, shingles sucks.

Particularly since the stress could send me into a reoccurance.