Friday, December 23, 2005
Hold the spiders, please
If you've been playing along with our home game, you may have seen that several of my friends have had ideas and suggestions about my pesty dermal afflictions.
This morning when I got up I found some of the small spots had gotten bigger. I considered trying to take another photo, but in the interests of public decency, decided to attempt a diagram instead.
(I have obviously been watching too much CSI.)
As you may recall, I was having difficulty believing in the Lone Spider theory, considering the multiple attack sites, and yet, it seemed kind of weird that a whole herd of spiders would be so well-coordinated that they could lay down a nice straight row of about 8 simultaneous bites.
And then suddenly I went, "Grk? STRAIGHT LINES?"
After few more minutes with Google, I can now admit I was led astray. Not an arachnoidal attack, but a viral one. Shingles.
The funny thing is that a friend of mine, who lives a mere three hours away, just recently came down with an outbreak of them, and yet it didn't even cross my mind when I was trying to sort out what the heck was up with the ol' bod. Maybe because I HAVE been spider-bit a few times over the years, and the initial reaction looked similar, so I didn't think to search further. Also, the straight line thing (shingles tend to erupt along a line following a nerve path in the body) wasn't apparent to me until I started trying to draw the eruptions. After that it was easy to, as it were, connect the dots....
Happily, this seems to be a fairly minor attack. It was probably brought on partly by stress, partly by all the darn chocolatey/nutty snacks that keep turning up in a holidayish sort of way, and partly by being over 50 and (maybe) slightly prone to getting hivey when upset. But it's not too painful or itchy and it's in an area normally covered by my clothes. So I will just double up my lysine intake, cut off chocolate and nuts (the arginine in them encourages viral replication) and all should be well fairly soon!
This morning when I got up I found some of the small spots had gotten bigger. I considered trying to take another photo, but in the interests of public decency, decided to attempt a diagram instead.
(I have obviously been watching too much CSI.)
As you may recall, I was having difficulty believing in the Lone Spider theory, considering the multiple attack sites, and yet, it seemed kind of weird that a whole herd of spiders would be so well-coordinated that they could lay down a nice straight row of about 8 simultaneous bites.
And then suddenly I went, "Grk? STRAIGHT LINES?"
After few more minutes with Google, I can now admit I was led astray. Not an arachnoidal attack, but a viral one. Shingles.
The funny thing is that a friend of mine, who lives a mere three hours away, just recently came down with an outbreak of them, and yet it didn't even cross my mind when I was trying to sort out what the heck was up with the ol' bod. Maybe because I HAVE been spider-bit a few times over the years, and the initial reaction looked similar, so I didn't think to search further. Also, the straight line thing (shingles tend to erupt along a line following a nerve path in the body) wasn't apparent to me until I started trying to draw the eruptions. After that it was easy to, as it were, connect the dots....
Happily, this seems to be a fairly minor attack. It was probably brought on partly by stress, partly by all the darn chocolatey/nutty snacks that keep turning up in a holidayish sort of way, and partly by being over 50 and (maybe) slightly prone to getting hivey when upset. But it's not too painful or itchy and it's in an area normally covered by my clothes. So I will just double up my lysine intake, cut off chocolate and nuts (the arginine in them encourages viral replication) and all should be well fairly soon!
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