From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: Let's hear it ...
Date: 28 Sep 92 16:34:27 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

(Aaron Humphrey) writes:
>: >Why doesn't everyone write to t.b to tell us how ill they are?
>: >I really don't think there are enough painful medical case-histories
>: >on the net.  Come on everyone, just how ill are you???????

>When I was quite young I got a cat scratch on my left arm, just below the
>elbow.  Since then, I have been periodically afflicted with herpes simplex in
>that spot.  Always the same spot, always the same pattern of sores.  The last
>such visitation was only a few months ago, and the scar is still visible as a
>slightly reddish spot.

>It used to surface almost exclusively when we were on holiday.  Since the virus
>apparently hides in the spinal column between outbreaks, it seems logical that
>nervous stimulation might provoke it into appearing.

Herpes simplex is a great deal easier than herpes zoster. The herpes zoster
virus also finds a home in your spinal column, and spends a lifetime with you.
Herpes zoster, by the way, comes to you through Chicken Pox, so many of you
probably have the little fellow right there now.

Anyway, herpes zoster also enjoys coming out of hiding during periods of 
stress and nervous stimulation. The symptoms, however, are much worse than
a small rash.

Nearing the end of my first semester in Graduate school, which was also my
first semester as a teaching assistant (Freshman English Comp), coming up
on three major papers and an annotated bibliography on John Dunne's "Hymn
to God, My God, in My Sickness" (how's that for irony), correcting
papers for my freshman english class, dealing with various freshman 
neuroses, after having moved halfway across the country 3 weeks after getting
married, having to sell our air conditioner to pay the rent because our
university jobs didn't pay up until the end of September, and trying desperatelyto prevent a scholarship basketball player (a poor disadvantaged kid with a 3rd
grade reading and writing level, but a damn good mind) from flunking and
blowing his only chance at the big time, guess what I got.

Shingles. That's what happens when you are stressed to the max and good old
h.z. decides to make an appearance. I ended up with a festering rash that
covered my chest and back in a pattern exactly tracing my ribcage. The rash
was a series of little bubbles filled with a sticky liquid that seeped out
when they burst.  And every little bubble was extremely suceptable to infection.Pain? It felt like somebody had done a 100 whacks with a baseball bat on my
ribs. I couldn't stand straight or bend over.

I was relieved when the doctor said I had "A classic, though somewhat mild,
case of shingles." Severe cases require weeks of hospitalization.

It didn't last that long, but I was able to parlay the temporary scarring
into a couple of Incompletes that got me out of the semester without
slitting the wrists.

Matt
I suppose this was a mean thing to report, what with all those impressionable
freshmen and 1st year med students out there just starting to feel a little
pressure. Most of them probably never had chicken pox anyway, Right?