not have shingles

The dermatologist called me (on a Saturday afternoon, believe it or not). It’s not shingles or fungus or lupus or sarcidosis . . . it’s rosacea.

Rosacea is a relatively benign thing, compared to any of the aforementioned alternatives. I can live with that.

but they don’t know what it is. The dermatologist said it was, “Nonspecific,” which I guess means, “I don’t know what it is.” She took a small biopsy (!) to make sure that it wasn’t a few unlikely but rather alarming things (lupus or sarcidosis). I was like, “What the hell is sarcidosis? It sounds like that thing AIDS patients get.” The thing I was thinking of was Kaposi’s sarcoma, which I guess isn’t related to sarcidosis. Of course, the advantage of being a patient nowadays is that you can figure out a lot of the jargon spouted by doctors (this one was a double doctor—an MD/PhD) by looking it up on the Internets. Anyway, I rather doubt it is any of those things but better safe than sorry.

Still getting better and still not sure whether it’s shingles. I spoke to my father, who had shingles a few years ago. He said he wasn’t in pain either.

Not confident enough to take this off my list but I feel OK. The cream my doc prescribed has caused the rash to subside somewhat (now it just looks like acne again). If it continues to vanish and I don’t feel any worse by Friday, I’ll consider this one done.

BTW, shingles is the revenge of the chicken pox virus. Most grown ups have had chicken pox and most kids have been vaccinated against it. After you’ve had it, the virus hides in your spine and then emerges years later when you have better things to do than fight it. Instead of itching, you get pain.

I had a somewhat amusing case of chicken pox when I was 22, a senior in college. Five year olds don’t really care that they’re covered with little welts: however, when one is a 22 year old college student, this comes as something of a blow to one’s vanity.

I went to the doc today for a rash that appeared on my forehead and he looked a little worried. He said it could be some sort of allergic reaction of some sort or it could be shingles. He said, “The fact that it’s isolated to one nerve cluster worries me.”

Then again, if it’s shingles, it would be one of the mildest cases in medical history, at least so far. No pain, just itches. I’m hoping it’s not shingles—I’ve heard shingles hurts a lot.