I'm pretty crabby these days. I've got shingles on my back. Shingles! And it's darned uncomfortable and painful. I'm usually a minimalist about medications, but I've been slugging down Tylenols as often as the directions allow. I've had the most recent vaccination so it's probably not as bad as it might have been otherwise; just a small patch about the size of a 50¢ piece, pink and red and blistery. But it has made my whole lower back ache and the skin around it feels tender and bruised. (Plus it doesn't help that I also seem to have injured my right shoulder, unrelated but also painful.)
What the hell??? Shingles? That's an old person's problem, and you have to understand, I'm only 37, lithe and strong and flexible and healthy, full of energy, a force of Nature.
I know that I'm 72, or at least my body is. I don't deny it, never lie about it, am not embarrassed by it, don't even mind it. I just don't feel it.
I wonder if everyone in the world is like me, being one age by the calendar and a different age in spirit. When something like this happens, something like shingles shows up to slow me down and slump my shoulders, there is a dissonance between how I think I ought to feel at the young, healthy age of my spirit and how I actually feel at my calendar age. It makes this old folks' condition seen like a mistake, an outrage, something I might have to deal with decades down the road, but not now, not yet.
Yet here I am, more aware than ever that I must expect health difficulties to show up now and then, and perhaps less then and increasingly now. Oh well, another day above ground, which offers the possibility of experiencing more of life. Including goddamn shingles.
