Day before yesterday, I mentioned in passing: “Night before last, I noticed some odd skin eruptions on the side of my face, just under and the side of my left eye. They have grown progressively larger in area since then. And one of them seems to have crept into the corner of my left eye, causing it to swell and itch. And my vision in that eye is noticeably fuzzy.”
Today, I went to the urgent care clinic outside the west gate of the Village because the rash wasn’t getting any better and because my eye was beginning to feel noticeably different. The diagnosis surprised me: shingles. I’ve been vaccinated against shingles. “That probably saved you from getting a worse case,” the guy who examined me said. He then prescribed two medications that I hope to pick up from the pharmacy this afternoon.
It’s more than modestly odd to be diagnosed with shingles not long before we’re going on an overseas trip with our neighbors. Just before they went on one of their long overseas trips a year or so ago, he was diagnosed with shingles. If I were superstitious or otherwise believed that the universe has a controlling mind of its own, I would be certain that there’s “meaning” in this pre-travel coincidence.
I wrote, in the same post I quoted above, “Bodily decay and dysfunction is unpleasant.” I am preaching to the choir. The medical specialists say I have shingles, but not the kind one puts on a roof. Dammit.
