But, it's only chickenpox...

About this time of year (well May anyway) my thoughts turn to Chicken Pox and how it changed my life (it didn't change my life that much, but hey! that's artistic licence). I am posting this, not because I want anything but because I want it to be here for other people to reference, I know it wasn't there for me!

Most people have Chicken Pox (Varicella Zoster) when they are young, when it doesn't really make you very ill. I had never contracted it as a child, maybe because I spent a lot of time on my own indoors because of Asthma, who knows, so when my children caught it in 2003 I was pretty sure that they would pass it to me.

So come April 2003 my elder son Matthew closely followed by Sam caught what I learned later was a particularly virulent strain it, was on the cards that I would catch it, which I did. As a hopefully responsible adult I did all the right things when the boys were infectious and made sure that all my work colleagues had already had CP so that it was safe to go to work until I came down with it. I even went to the lengths of making sure that anyone who came in for a meeting was immune too.

So it happened that, towards the end of April when I was hosting a meeting at work, that I first noticed little red spots appearing on the insides of my forearms. Aha, here it comes we all thought and everyone joked about me having 10 days off (the period when you are infectious) and what I would do with the time, after all I wouldn't be that ill would I? I had looked it up on numerous medical web sites, and so knew that it was more of a problem when you are older. I was therefore not surprised, when that night I started to feel really quite ill. This was wednesday and really the start of everything.

That night, I had real difficulty sleeping. My body had lots of spots and I was finding it really hard to find a position that was comfortable. Still, this was only to be expected after all I was in my 40's and expected it to be bad. That night, unable to get comfortable I didn't get any sleep. This wasn't a problem as I was ill and didn't have to get going the next day so not to worry.

That was the last time I was really what I consider to be cogent for an awfully long time.

More later. Click here.