Another lost weekend...

This weekend has been quite pitiful. Between the shingles (in parts where you'd never want them), my weekly RA biologics making me feverish, sick & sore,  and the side effects from the 3x a day anti-virals for those shingles, I spent most of the weekend in searing pain, nodding out, or unconscious.

Thus no FB activity. I didn't have the attention span or energy to even pick up a tablet. Now that's bad for me.

Today's major "activities" -- since I'm sick of being sick from my declining autoimmune state and I'm stubborn -- involved limping, slow, short trips -- one to the grocery store, and briefly to Costco. That was so exhausting that as Kate drove the 15 min home, I nodded out, then needed a 4 hour nap. Saturday I was even more useless, if that can be believed.

I don't know if I'll be in any shape to work tomorrow since the anti-virals knock me out and I have to take one dose midday. (4 more days to go).
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Shingles...and not on the roof

G-d dammit. I need another health hurdle like a hole in the head, but here we are. I've had an outbreak of shingles.

Shingles is a painful skin rash. It is caused by the varicella zoster virus. Shingles usually appears in a band, a strip, or a small area on one side of the face or body. It is also called herpes zoster.
Shingles is most common in older adults and people who have weak immune systems because of stress, injury, certain medicines, or other reasons. Most people who get shingles will get better and will not get it again.

Um. Wrong. I had an outbreak back in the 80s along a nerve near my eye, which is a pretty dangerous area to get it. I was in a lot of pain for a  few weeks, with the weeping sores, burning, aw damn. I was under a lot of job stress at the time and that triggered the shingles. I was a lot healthier then, so I tolerated it better and recovered pretty well.

Shingles occurs when the virus that causes chickenpox starts up again in your body. After you get better from chickenpox, the virus "sleeps" (is dormant) in your nerve roots. In some people, it stays dormant forever. In others, the virus "wakes up" when disease, stress, or aging weakens the immune system. Some medicines may trigger the virus to wake up and cause a shingles rash. It is not clear why this happens. But after the virus becomes active again, it can only cause shingles, not chickenpox. 

You can't catch shingles from someone else who has shingles. But there is a small chance that a person with a shingles rash can spread the virus to another person who hasn't had chickenpox and who hasn't gotten the chickenpox vaccine.Shingles symptoms happen in stages. At first you may have a headache or be sensitive to light. You may also feel like you have the flu but not have a fever. 

Later, you may feel itching, tingling, or pain in a certain area. That's where a band, strip, or small area of rash may occur a few days later. The rash turns into clusters of blisters. The blisters fill with fluid and then crust over. It takes 2 to 4 weeks for the blisters to heal, and they may leave scars.

Yeah, all of that. Where did it occur this time?