Now I really must protest.

I promised myself that I wasn't going to post about anything but India until I finished slogging through our trip and boring you with tales of our adventures (we had fun, though). However, something has happened that has nullified that desire. My next post will be about Bombay, but for now, a brief rant.

My husband has been trying to tell me for a couple of months now that the universe is inherently unfair. Until last week, I persisted in my Pollyanna-ish thinking, asserting that you just needed to look at things the right way. Then it happened. Then I got shingles. What. The. Hell?? At 32, I got a disease more typical of a 50- or 60-year old. Why? Apparently it was stress that cause it to erupt.

I first noticed...something about two weeks ago, a week before it started. My head kept tingling, not a good sign, especially for someone with a seizure disorder. But I ignored it. It happens every once in a while and has never meant anything, but you do tend to pause at the least little abnormality when something's wrong with your brain.

Then I got the weird thingy at the corner of my eyebrow. Do I have dandruff on my eyebrow? I thought. How does that happen? Nah, must be a pre-zit or something. But the next day I noticed it was wet. Ewwww! Then the stabbing pain began in my eye. For three days, I would be forced to pause or double over in pain as an ice pick was driven into my skull. I was really tired, too. I had been exercising a lot, so that was kind of weird, since I live on exercise. My muscles were stiff and aching every time I woke up, when I stood up, walked, climbed stairs at work - more or less anything I did. Then I started losing my appetite. Definitely weird.

Finally on Thursday night the migraine started. Stabbing, throbbing pain as I tried to pat my little boy back to sleep in the middle of the night. Finally, I just lay down on the floor and held my head until my husband came in and took over. I took the next morning off, then tried to drive into work, almost throwing up from the pain by the time I got there. I grabbed my laptop's power cable and left again and went to bed. By Saturday morning, I was at the ER where some chuckling doctor told me I had shingles. I gaped at him and he kept on chuckling, telling me that if he had a dime for every 30-year old who was surprised to get shingles, he'd be rich.

At 4 a.m., I was released with a prescription for an anti-viral med and some vicodin ("heh, heh, you'll definitely need the pain medication," the doctor said. The jackass.). Finally, I got home, took some pills and got into bed. There was nothing but pain for the next 48 hours. I'd pass out for an hour and a half and try to stay as still as possible until my next allowed dose of vicodin. Plus, my eye swelled shut when the virus moved toward my optic nerve. I had to go back to the ER to have them make sure there was no damage. There is a little bit, but it should repair itself.

Then my son started having trouble breathing. My husband took him to the ER. They came back, went back to bed. My husband spent Monday babysitting both me and our son. Tuesday I watched Ragsy in the morning and my husband came home again to watch both of us.

For the first three days of the illness, I wasn't allowed to touch my son. The pain was awful, but not being able to help him feel better was pure hell. I still can't kiss him or let him anywhere near my face. I can't put him to bed or comfort him at night because my head may touch his pillow and I have sores all over the right side of my face and in my hair on my scalp.

Then last night the fever came again. I have his infection. Plus, I have phantom pain lingering from the shingles. Every once in a while the right side of my face throbs sharply. And my calves have started to tighten, another side effect, so sometimes I get charlie horses at night.

I know other people have it lots, lots worse. I can't imagine getting this illness if I were bedridden and already sick. Just another bit of proof that the universe is not fair. Stupid universe.