scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

11.9.13

in which i go on vacation and get shingles

We were staying, of course, in a tiny French beach house/condo in the Languedoc, with a lovely little front and back porch, and just enough beds and inflatable mattresses and folding couches to sleep us all: me and E and Y, and Y's uncle and cousin and cousin's ex-boyfriend: it was the uncle's house. And the half of us were upstairs and the ceilings upstairs were quite low, and the ceiling beams were lower, and i was ever so careful to not bump my head on them because they were large and solid and wooden and very low, especially over the stairs. (Ominous.) The ex-boyfriend bumped his head on them just about daily or at least twice in the three and a half days that we were there that i saw, as our space was in front of the stairs, with a very clear view of everyone bumping their heads on the damned ceiling beams. I was luckier, back then.

On the very last morning, cleaning out the little space and packing everything into the little-but-not-so-little rented car (it was a bimmer, with sixteen kilometers on it when we stared, and five and a half thousand kilometers on it when we gave it back later) i was carrying too many things and looking around and as i was rotating my head from looking around to see what was left to be picked up to back forwards to go down the stairs - the ceilings were not so low that one couldn't stand up straight, except for the ceiling beams - i whaled my temple on this old black wood. I thought nothing of it. I whaled my temple; so what? (Please note: mechanical trauma, ding ding ding. gatti 2010, thomas 2004.)

It hurt the whole day. We drove halfway across France. There was a small museum, some wine. (I whaled my temple; so what?)

The next day continued to be headachey and, hmm, it hurt as well around my cheekbone, which was not where I had whaled my head. A bit of being sleepy but it was so sunny and warm driving south to Spain, everyone was a bit sleepy, so we had a nice family nap/quiet read upon arriving at the little vacation hotel to meet Y's friend and his kid. But why did it still hurt? Anyway we hiked up and wandered around the little cobblestoned historic Spanish medieval city and had many tapas as well as beer, being mostly Germans. E ate all the calamari, again. That night it hurt behind my ear, and around the back-end of my jaw, which were also decidedly not where I had whaled my head. I was getting confused because I had had exactly zero concussion symptoms: no nausea, no dizziness, no forgetting of anything (which is obvious to you, dear reader), no confusion. No more sleepiness than anyone else driving south in the sunshine. It couldn't be a concussion, then, right, with nothing? What the hell? Sleep was hard. I was nervous as fuck all.

The next next day it hurt on my jaw, and behind my ear, and across my cheekbone, and above my eyebrow, and across my forehead. Also my temple hurt, still, continuously. It was a weird sort of hurt, for a headache: not throbby, not at all, but perfectly constant, like a distant air horn. Not, also, what i would call debilitating, at that point. We drove and walked to a funny little river not too far away (they'd recommended it at the little vacation hotel) and E dipped her feet in the water playing with the friend's kid, and Y actually went swimming in the mountain stream, but i can only imagine how cold it was because mountain stream? No thank you. The friend's kid had an utter fascination with rocks, and the breaking of them, being of course seven and a boy. And we had a picnic by the little stream and more and more people kept coming (they brought their dogs, too, and the dogs looked so desperately at our picnic) and it was very sunny but we were also rather high up and there was a continuous breeze off the peaks, so it didn't seem particularly hot but one had to keep reapplying suntan lotion all the same. Everyone stopped to pee in the bushes before we said goodbye.

After the picnic we drove back to France again, dropped E off at an aunt's, and took little old me to the Urgences. It was very quiet in the hospital - i think they are mostly set up for skiing accidents, and this was high summer, being a Sunday in the middle of August - and the poor radiologist on duty kept going back and forth to the coffee machine, to the wc, to flirt with the also bored triage nurse - one nurse walked through with a patient in a wheelchair, to get a coffee, and (later) once i was in a proper room i saw one other proper ER patient come in. I felt like a hideous, self-centered, hysterical moron for going to the fucking ER two days after bumping my head. I think they triaged that i was nothing serious and the doctor could finish his card game. I felt better that it was taking so long for the doctor to show up when absolutely nothing else was going on; it couldn't be threatening, it couldn't be anything at all. Moron, but otherwise generally okay. They also figured out right proper quick that Y was of an important family in the town and we could, for example, give them the Austrian insurance card and they'd try and figure out how Austria would pay for it and we could come back tomorrow and they'd tell us what it would cost then. The waiting room had two buzzing flies in it, and an untouched stack of magazines. Three childrens' books were on top of the magazines, for parents to have immediate access. Very kind, very well thought of. The newest magazine - the spines with dates on them were all facing out - was three years old; most were about home decorating.

A nurse brought me to a room, eventually, and took all my vitals. The doctor will be right with you, eventually. The machine showing my vitals was, of course, behind my head so i couldn't see it. I am sure they put it there on purpose so that patients don't freak out. Y was next to me, translating the six signs posted above the sink about proper washing of hands, as well as everything else. The doctor came in and - was confused. Why did i have a fever? My head hurt. I had bumped it, and it hurt in a different place, and the different place was too far away from the bumping place for it to be a migrating bruise, and my ears were perfect, my eyes were fine, i clearly had no concussion, no worries there. The red spot on my forehead, well, this was a migrating bruise. But where was this fever coming from? (All of this, all of this in the ER, was basically entirely in French. The doctor understood English, so i could talk, and i could understand, oh, the majority of what he said. But not all of it. I am lucky to have Y.) The doctor took my temperature again and the fever was higher than it had been twenty minutes ago when the nurse did it. He consulted his Giant French Doctors' Book on the desk in the corner. Two nurses came in and watched Dr. Maison at work; everything was very mysterious. He came back and said, Okay, we'll try something else - stand up, feet together, hands out straight, eyes shut - now don't fall over. Sit down, hands out straight, eyes shut, hold my hands as steady as possible. Shake hands without looking, squeeze as hard as I can, now the other one. I think he was checking for a brain tumor, now. He squeezed my legs, he asked if i had a bladder infection, if this hurt, if this hurt, if this hurt. He would press somewhere, Ca fait mal?, and I kept saying, rien, rien, rien, rien, rien, until he got to behind my jaw and behind my ear, and then i yelped and squirmed away because la, ca fait mal très très très fort. The other side of my head did not hurt. My teeth did not hurt. Eating did not hurt any more than anything else. Why was there this fever? Why was the one side of my head so swollen? I have a history of sinus infections. It hurt behind my ear, behind my jaw. The doctor tried everything and what felt like aeons later decided an infection, mastoiditis, was maybe just starting in the spongy bit of my skull, and that the behind my ear thing had nothing to do with the head bumping from earlier. I felt like less of an idiot.

(I googled it later. Mastoiditis would also have sucked.)

He gave me ten days' worth of antibiotics and three days' worth of paracetamol. I call it three days' worth because of the max dosage on the packaging to avoid the bad parts of liver toxicity. I was on the max dosage of paracetamol for ... several days, after this. With the paracetamol, i could sleep. Kinda. For a little while. Which was a fucking gift of god, let me tell you. French Dr. House said, if it doesn't get better by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, see a doctor again, either come back here (i.e. the ER) or another doctor.

The next day, Monday, i was very hopeful and expecting all the best from the antibiotic, but Y said i looked worse than the day before. I had funny hives on my forehead, inside the red, branching, linear shape. Because i am a genius at explaining to everybody that i am perfectly okay, all the time, no matter what, i decided that they must be brennesseln from when we stopped to pee in the bushes by the little Spanish river - in a line, after all, more or less, and i've never learned to notice what brennesseln look like because it's not poison ivy and anyway it goes away in an hour. Genius, like i said. We walked to a little restaurant in town and saw some friend of the aunt's on the street, and in the restaurant, stopped to chat, all kinds of people. It is a very small town. Monday night, as well as the rest of the time between paracetamols, everything that had ever hurt, hurt. About four a.m on Tuesday morning i decided i had to go back to the doctor because dear god stop the pain. I ate another paracetamol.

We went in the morning to the aunt's GP, twenty minutes' drive out of town, up closer to the skiing. He had me lie down on fresh paper and, wordlessly, and veryvery fast, he appeared with a tiny little sterile vial of something yellow and poured it into my eye and then switched on the brightest light i have ever seen and shined it at me, and then, bless him, turned off the light and rinsed out the yellow with something clear. (Really, certain people are very like tigers.) And that was it: i was diagnosed, he was done, his ex-wife in town (see her, there, that's the friend of the aunt's - it is a very small town) had called him the day before to say i'd be coming and looked funny with those blisters, and he'd diagnosed me before we'd met, only needing the yellow to confirm it, and he was totally right. (Note that i hadn't had the characteristic blisters on the Sunday, so it wasn't at all the ER guy's fault, and props to him for knowing that something, anything, was coming.) The only thing remaining was to somehow communicate to me what i had, because Y did not know how to say "shingles" in English and i had never heard of it in any other language because that is some very specific and in-depth vocabulary. But la varicelle is similar enough and it's a childhood illness and then it restes in les ganglions nerveux and i go, I HAVE SHINGLES? and they all have no idea because nobody else knows what it is en Anglais. I make a spots and scratching gesture, la varicelle, c'est avec les trucs? Et ca reste à l'intérieur? and, yeah, that, yesyes. Fucking hell. Fucking hell. I recover the information that he put something fluorescéine in my eye: no shit, sherlock; that was glowy as anything. I get ten days' worth of two different antivirals, more paracetamol, a topical disinfectant. This three times a day, this two, this as needed, this two, this three, this two. This not in your eye. This in, because of the BLISTER ON MY MOTHERFUCKING CORNEA. I am on more drugs than i have ever been on in my life.

I ate my antivirals and paracetamol and smeared my eye and my face all up and tried to sleep. It didn't work, the trying to sleep. Ever. I could come out and eat, some - Tantine gave me a pair of Dior sunglasses and a Christian Lacroix giant silk scarf, to hide the disfigurement of my head. That was the up side: that and the food. (Tantine takes excellent care of us, always.) E got to watch French cartoons and have all the croque-monsieur she could eat. I hurt, and counted the seconds until i could take more paracetamol. The paracetamol helped, a little.

I tried to meditate, but could not empty myself. I visualized a flame that would draw away the pain but it was too burny and didn't help anyway. I recited the Litany against Fear - after all, my head was in the box, my head was the box, that scene has always stuck with me, except Paul was done in only moments and (as i write this later) he was unmarked afterwards, unlike some people i might mention - and i wasn't scared, i can let the pain pass over me and through me, but letting it pass did not reduce it, because more always came.

An aura healer lady came who was known, in the town, for being able to heal shingles pain, specifically. She put her hands on my shoulders, and near my head, near my eye, and before she was started i couldn't open my eye - it had been swollen shut - and after she was done, i could open it. Things were bright and weird, but i could open it, and it hurt much less, much less, a much bigger difference than the paracetamol, and i could eat, a little bit, and i could sleep. I could sleep and it was such a gift, and the aura healer lady wouldn't take any money, and i am going to send her the most beautiful christmas present EVER because i could sleep, finally, finally. All i had ever wanted in the world was that the pain would either make me pass out, somehow, like one always reads about in war novels and such, or else wane enough that i could sleep, instead of being so - tenacious. So possessive. And this magical French country witch was now my best friend in the entire world.

Labels: health, travel

scrawled @ 21:09

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