If it isn't the fence it's the shingles!

My skin felt so sensitive that I could not stand for my shirt or pants to touch it. My back was aching like a kidney infection or like someone was pressing their foot deep into my muscle. It came around the front like a labor pain striking a blow.

I thought for sure my skin had stretched so far with my weight gain that the very molecular structure of it was pulling apart and soon it would stretch – like a rubber band – to the breaking point and snap. It must be my weight!

But then I begin to think about rubber bands. You know people are like rubber bands. When they are at rest they are basically useless…just hanging around. When they are stretched they become useful – even indispensable. Maybe skin is like a rubber band…no maybe it is like people….or no maybe it isn’t. So enough of that thought train.

My mind found no end to its bizarre thought rides as I wondered what this painful burning on the surface of my skin was from. A niacin flush gone wild – a skin eating bacteria that shows no sign of its ravaging effects until one morning you wake up with a hole in your side.

Finally on Wednesday, a blistering stinging rash appeared and my bizarre thoughts sucked themselves in – all to a condensed focused point – I had the shingles. Oh the pain. Got some medicine from the doctor and a healthy dose of pity.

Went to work Friday. Thought I would suffer through it quietly and survive till the weekend when I could rest. I walked into the office, greeted my office supervisor and the first thing I heard myself say (before I could swoop it back in my mouth.)…”Did you know people are like rubber bands?” And that led to you know what.

I love sympathy when I deserve it.