I am constantly amazed at how stress has messed with my mind and my memory. I went back to my journals to make sure to get everything in the right order and discovered that I have remembered quite a few things not only out of order, but completely WRONG!! For instance, the stuff with Jesse and the AS diagnosis happened much closer to Ken’s death than I remembered. And we didn’t get to go to TEAM Evaluation as quickly as I had remembered...it was quicker than usual, but we did have to wait a couple of weeks. I was thinking the lady had told me we could come in a couple of days, but truthfully, it was a couple of weeks. It was still sooner than we could have hoped for or expected.
I also didn’t remember that in the midst of all of the scopes, scans and tests for Ken’s new symptoms, he developed shingles. Don’t know how I could have forgotten that. It started with Ken complaining of pain in his back (not the same pain I’ve been talking about) that sort of wrapped around to the front and ached into his groin muscles. With everything else that was going on, I figured it was all part of the same problem. Well, a day or so later, when Ken lifted up his shirt for me to hook him up to “Bill”, I noticed an angry-looking red rash on his back. It had hard blistery-looking things on it and was warm to the touch. Ken didn’t even know it was there until I asked him what it was. I called Jan and she said it sounded like it could be shingles and that we should probably call Dr. Schlabach.
When Ken woke up the next morning, the rash was MUCH worse. It didn’t cover his whole back, but sort of made a huge red swath starting at his mid-back and wrapping around his side and onto his abdomen and down toward his groin. It looked like someone had thrown boiling water on him. He had also started running a temperature. I called Dr. Schlabach’s office. Dr. S. was out of the office for a couple of days, so I spoke with his associate (can’t remember his name) who said he thought from my description that it was probably shingles. Told us to come in and let him have a look at it to be sure. We trotted off toward Erlanger Hospital...AGAIN! The doctor took one look and said, “Yep, it’s shingles alright.” I told him I thought shingles was an “old-person disease”. He said that usually it was, but people with compromised immune systems were prone to get it too. He gave us a prescription for Acyclovir, an antiviral drug. He said Ken would have to take it for two weeks, five times a day. “Why so much medicine and why so long?” I asked. He said that if Ken had been healthy when he got shingles, he would only have to take the Acyclovir for three days. But since Ken had no spleen and his immune system was so depressed, he would need to take it for two solid weeks. Oh boy! One more thing!
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