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My Turn Charlotte Phillips |
Ship or shingles:
Pain collides
with a dreamI am sitting at the Kaneohe Longs prescription counter, disheveled, drawing suspicious glances, as I sway to the rhythm of the pain and try to ease my agony with a half-gallon of cold milk acting as an ice pack on my left shoulder. I am holding a bottle of calamine lotion in my right hand. People are steering clear.
How did I get into this situation? This was my last week at work. I wanted to enjoy every moment of it. Every non-working hour was to be used preparing for my upcoming adventure. Instead, every day at work was a struggle, and after work I was at Kaiser.
Last Monday I had a routine check-up with my doctor, who had me get hepatitis A and typhoid shots for my trip. He gave me the form the freighter company required, ensuring I was OK to travel on a ship without a doctor. I mentioned the annoying muscle ache that had started in my shoulder the previous Friday, but I told him I was confident it would pass. I bade him goodbye.
On Tuesday my plan was to buy a digital camera and learn how to use it (I can barely take decent pictures with a point-and-shoot camera). But the pain had become excruciating. Back to my doctor. He did an EKG and a chest X-ray, plus a few other tests. He prescribed medication.
On Wednesday I was to go to the Apple store with my new iBook and my new digital camera (oops, didn't buy it!) so the geniuses could help me figure out how to get them to work together. But there I was, apologetically back at Kaiser, fearing they would write me off as a hypochondriac.
But I was in pain, dammit, and I needed help. My doctor performed more tests. He said he would think it was shingles if I had a rash, but I had no rash. He gave me medication in case it was a lung infection.
On Thursday I was going to check out the GPS system my friend Steve recommended so I could figure out my latitude and longitude while I am cut off from phones, radios and television, but the pain mockingly said, "Think again." My doctor was away so the Koolau people told me to go to the emergency room. I drove to Moanalua. When I got home at 5 p.m., I took the pills the ER doctors prescribed and fell into bed.
I awoke suddenly and saw that it was 6 o'clock. I panicked. I always get up at 5 a.m. and walk to the minimart to get the Star-Bulletin. I drove to the minimart, grabbed a paper, paid them and left. When I got home, I realized the clock read 8, not 6. It was even later than I thought.
Lucidity suddenly emerged as I wondered, "How can it be dark at 8 a.m.?" I looked at the paper and it was a Thursday paper. This was like "Groundhog Day." I was reliving Thursday. I had slept for only one hour. In addition to being in mind-boggling pain, I now felt pretty stupid, as well.
On Friday I had big plans, but again I was at Kaiser. When the doctor saw me, it was after 5. He suppressed a sigh. I showed him a mark on my arm. Voila! It was the shingles rash. It had appeared while I was in the waiting room. Shingles results when a dormant chickenpox virus mounts a new attack on a main nerve of the body, and my sleeping demon had attacked my left side. We finally knew what was causing the pain.
By the time the condition revealed itself, Kaiser's pharmacy was closed so I went to Longs.
And here I sit. Soon I will have the medicine that I hope will restore my life to normal.
My carefully laid plans for the week were demolished. But I will make up for it as soon as I can function because I am chugging off on a freighter to Asia in less than three weeks, pain or no pain, and to borrow an idea from someone I don't particularly admire, the only way to get my freighter ticket away from me is to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Charlotte Phillips, a copy editor with the Star-Bulletin since 1996, is leaving to take a long, sentimental journey on a German freighter to ports in China and South Korea.
My Turn is a periodic column written by
Star-Bulletin staff members expressing
their personal views.