Embarrassing Illnesses

No, no. Fret not. I have no STDs.

But I do have something which, when I first described it to my husband over the phone, made him sit up and take notice and think of them.

It all started off innocuously enough. Fever, sore throat, chills. I took my ibuprofen, took a surreptitious nap while at work (unlike my graduate-student days, I can no longer slumber away, drooling, at my desk, in front of all and sundry. Postdocs, for some reason, are expected to behave with some more dignity). I stuck it out till the end of the day and then lurched back home where not even the prospect of Alex Trebeck and Jeopardy could keep me from stumbling straight into bed.

The next day began with a incessant, insistent itching on my palms. I examined them blearily and spotted three little bumps on one palm and two little bumps on the base of my fingers on the other. Shingles? I wondered in a panic. Surely not? I took pictures of the various bumps and sent them away to the man. Once he checked out the pictures, he called back and said "It looks like hand-foot and -mouth disease".

So yes. I have managed to get a disease that usually only affects little kids... in fact, not even little kids, more like infants and toddlers. Ani's daycare has had a couple of cases, but I haven't seen Ani with any of the symptoms (yet).

The first appearance of the bumps on my hands were 3 days ago. Since then, every day has brought with it a set of new symptoms, which in obedience to the name, do proceed from the hand to the feet and then, most painfully, to the mouth. And no, it is not because I kept touching these parts with my blister-filled hands. And the blisters are PAINful. And the itchiness! It is enough to drive one crazy. It's a unique torment, because you can't scratch at the blisters for they are tender, and at the same time, you can't think of anything but scratching at those itches. In those two days of torment, I felt like Tantalus in his pond of water. What did help was a concoction of castor oil and turmeric. I would pour some of this on my hands and keep rubbing it in gently into the blisters- the turmeric, in addition to being an antiseptic, acted as a gentle abrasive which served the purpose of scratching those itchy blisters.

Anyway, because I was quite immobilized (and mute. Blisters in the mouth and throat are the worst), I read books constantly. I have recently discovered the ebooks- section of Carnegie Library and spent all day and most of the nights downloading different books, reading them and returning them online. Technology! How perfectly lovely it is! My new finds are Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco mystery series and the book "Watching my Language" by William Safire. More on these in later posts.