It’s about time

I’ve just realised that it was exactly a year ago that I had shingles, aka herpes zoster. I had what I thought was an eye infection and went to a pharmacist who was an amazing person – he took one look at my eye and in rather a dramatic (but necessary) way, pointed to the exit and instructed me fiercely to go to A&E (the accident and emergency clinic at the hospital) I dithered and he almost shouted in an urgent way, ‘Go! Go now! Go straight to A&E!) I went straight there, and they took one look at me and put me in an isolation room. Obviously hospitals are so busy now, but I had to wait four boring and frustrating hours with my very sore eye, before I was seen by a doctor and told to go to the Bristol Eye Hospital.

Up to Bristol and after another very long wait I was seen by two doctors who told me I had shingles, caused by the varicella-zoster herpes virus; they  prescribed me three lots of meds and some eye drops and told me to go home and go to bed. Up to this point I didn’t feel too bad apart from my very painful eye which was gradually closing. I returned home and over the next day I gradually declined. I became hot and feverish, my eye closed and I developed blisters on my forehead and scalp. I wasn’t well. I didn’t know if I was asleep or awake, I had pain, I felt disoriented and hazy, time became variable, the skin on my face and head hurt and was painful to the slightest touch, blisters and eruptions broke out – thankfully very localised to around my eye (but not in my eye) my aforementioned forehead and all across my scalp. Without being too graphic, scabs formed, tightening and pulling my skin, thankfully not itchy but painful and uncomfortable.

I was so fortunate that I had a dear person to wait on me, leaving me alone when I wanted, attentive when I needed, making drinks, changing bedding, reminding me to take the various pills, and researched itchy, painful skin and bought me some wonderful and soothing witch-hazel and tea-tree cream which was just magical. As I became better, food arrived, books found, newspapers presented, windows opened or closed, all in all a regular Florence Nightingale.

After three weeks I eventually felt well enough to go out; the sky was so bright, the colours of everything so vivid, but I felt distanced and apart from everything I saw through the car windows. I gradually got better, and soon I was properly better, but it took quite a while to feel properly connected to reality. I felt mentally adrift and everything seemed strange and new and slightly wonderful. Mentally I was quite woolly – I’ve always been absent-minded and forgetful, but this was different.

I don’t think I really realised how it had really affected me, and it’s only now, exactly a year on, that I think I feel properly me all the time. It has seriously affected my writing – I think I have “excused” myself as being idle, being somewhat lazy, or having lost whatever it is/was that makes me a writer. I actually think – without making excuses of being lazy or lacking concentration or being disorganised or procrastinating (all of which I’ve always been or had a tendency to do)  – I actually think some of it can be laid at the door of herpes zoster.

Well, that may be so, but I think it’s about time I took up arms against it, stop using it as an excuse (or explaining things by it) and get my act together.