How My Short, Happy Career in Medicine Came to an End

My conscience is prodding me to admit
that I did not, after all, find a cure for bone cancer.
I am referring to an earlier post in which I described
having been attacked by needles down my legs.

As it turned out, I contracted shingles.
"But, but . . . !" I sputtered to the doctor,
"Last year I had a very expensive shingles shot!"
"Oh, yes," he said, "that should make it less severe."

"Less severe" isn't.

It began with a nasty rash.
I did not go to the doctor soon enough for the medicine to be effective,
so I daubed something on whatever appeared,
while my nervous system fired shots at the enemy so effectively
that my nervous system became the enemy.
At the end of each day, I felt that someone,
softening me up for a knockout punch somewhat later,
had beaten my midsection to submission.

People who call themselves my friends
tell me that they have had shingles, too,
and that in two or three months I will be OK.
My least appreciated friend says that his shingles
comes back every year, just like clockwork.

Shingles!
I looked up the origin of the name.
It comes from Latin and French (I should have known!),
and it means "belt", an allusion to the fact that the virus
often breaks out in a belt around the midsection.
Mine is not a belt around the midsection.
In fact, I shall not describe for you where shingles belted me,
but I will admit that from time-to-time I jump to attention
and try not to grab what hurts most.

I am telling you all of this
so that you will not write to me
for the recipe that cures bone cancer.
I was wrong about that.
Not willfully. Just mistaken.
And I have no cure for shingles, either,
other than suggesting that, as a child,
you should not have contracted chickenpox,
and that, as an adult, you should get a very expensive shot
to make your shingles less severe when you get them.

You see, after you have chickenpox,
the virus stays in your body,
and sometimes, after age fifty or so,
belts you. More or less.

Comments

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