So, yeah, my kid has shingles. And why do I love you all? Because you’ve been trying to help me figure out what ELSE it is. Y’all? Sweet as sugah. Sadly enough, it really is shingles, and since I now know every single thing there will ever be to know about shingles*, and therefore have an excuse to be an over-bearing know-it-all in yet another field of medicine, I thought I’d tell you how you can know if your kid gets it, too. Which they won’t. Because almost no kids do. Because only my freakazoid family gets these stupid, weird illnesses.

Really. How many kids do you know with conjoined toes? How many people do you know with two holes in their heart (who are still alive?) Horseshoe kidneys? Tumors on their brains and their thyroids? DOGS WITH LYME’S DISEASE? Bungholes in the middle of booty cheeks? It’s a good thing we’re witty.

Shingles: A kid has to have had the Chicken Pox first. Now, if you’ve vaccinated your kid for the CP, chances are they’re never going to see the shingles in their childhood. Chances, mind you. It’s extremely rare for a kid with the Chicken Pox vaccine to get shingles. Apparently, it’s not rare enough. (Side note: I fought that damn vaccine tooth and nail, got bullied into giving it to her, and am now violently spitting at that moron.)

Exposure to a virus causes it. The odds are stacked really high in favour of that virus needing to be the Chicken Pox virus, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that. It can be any old virus that really gets their immune system distressed. That virus courses itself through their little body and low-and-behold! What does it find? It finds some lingering Chicken Pox anti-body (immunization or just residual from actually having the disease.) The anti-body and the virus meet. They woo. They make exchange of vow. And then, once they’re all confortable and start farting in front of each other, BAM. The virus cheats on the anti-body with the neighboring nerve. She’s way more edgy, and closes the door when she pees and stuff.

You can tell it’s shingles and not, say, the Hand Foot Mouth thingy that a lot of you guessed 3of3 has by this: H/F/M produced little rashes around the, you guessed it, hands and mouth. And sometimes on the booty. Shingles, however, are isolated and don’t seem to spread very far. They follow a nerve. They tell me it’s commonly found on the chest. 3of3 has it it a nerve of her left arm. What we saw was a rash in her fingers (nerve endings, yo) that then appeared in her palm, around her elbow, and more or less in a straight line up her arm (following the path of the nerve it hit). They are large clusters of rashes that have lots of small, fluid filled blisters in them. It kind of looks like a bunch of little spider eyes looking back at you. For us, it looked like a contact burn at first, and then an allergic reaction, and then an insect bite, and then I noticed that it was hanging out around her joints. That was my first BIG clue.

The pain comes from the pressure on the nerves. The pain is quite intense.

The good news is that when children get it, the duration isn’t as long and the pain is not anywhere near as intense as when an adult gets it. It still hurts, but $5 and one box of Dora band-aids plastered up her arm, and she’s hangin’ tough.

The other good news when kids have it is that no medications really do a dang bit of good, so unless it’s in the nerves of the face or eye, they are going to send you home with a prescription for lollipops. You can give Tylenol if the pain is really bugging them, but you will NOT have to force anti-virals down their throat. Also nice is that it’s not horribly contagious. If it can be covered with clothing, it’s not considered non-communicable. Unless you’ve got a thing for licking rashes. Which, if you do, could you maybe not read my blog anymore, okay?

Oh, and one other bit of good news? The kid slept until ELEVEN today. That? Like heaven.

*You know I’m kidding, right? Because, yeah, I’m totally kidding.

1. Have a child. Make sure she has almost no pigment in her skin. A 75% Scotch/Irish and 25% Ukrainian mix should do nicely.

2. Don’t forget that she’ll need to be trampy enough to have 3 kids.

3. Put a couple of those kids in Little League.

4. Get one of those kids into a really kick-ass team who advances all the way to the Championship game.

5. But make sure they spend two FULL bright, sunny hot days at the ballpark before they get through.

6. And sign her up to work the barbecue grill for three hours.

7. And make sure the other kids distract her just enough that she totally forgets about sunscreen.

8. While she’s wearing a wife-beater.

8. Enjoy.

I spend way more time on this little space o’ mine talking about shoving people out of my hoo-hah than I think is fitting. It’s not really why I write this thing, but the story keeps coming back up anyway. Sarcastic Mom is doing a Carnival of Torture Labor today, and who am I to resist, really?

You can read, if you must, my first son’s very long-winded, detailed, touching birth story here. Then you can click here and read the slightly shorter, slightly snarkiner story of my second son’s birth. If you must, you could click this link and read the 3/4 of a paragraph that I managed to piece together of my third child’s birth. Really, I don’t remember most of it. And yes, I was sober through the whole thing. Poor third kid.

In the interest of participation, and in the interest of A) not boring you to tears and B) not subjecting you to the pure horror that is the picture my mother-in-law decided to click of my hootchie-chootchie immediately after I gave her a shiny happy grandson (will she ever just be nice to me? Sheesh!), I offer you the clif-notes version of the worst 27 months of my whole damn life.

I hate being pregnant the way Marilyn Manson hates going to church.

Kid one: I gained 105 pounds, I have 3 permanently fused vertebrae in my lower back and a highway on my tummy in stretch marks.

An open letter to Mr. Lady
From: Her hair follicles.
CC: Her skin
Date: 28 Nov 07

Dear Mr Lady,

What exactly is wrong with you? We’ve been working together for 32 3/4 years now, and so far, there have been few incidents. We have fulfilled our end of the deal with you; you have luscious, full hair, that isn’t a terrible color and grows like a weed. You’re welcome. We have worked very hard to take all of those Ding Dongs and Coffee Ice Cream treats and turn them into something that we can work with. You’re welcome. You haven’t exactly made this easy on us, but we have never complained. Yeah, we did give you a little gap in your left eyebrow, but dude, you so had that coming. Maybe if you didn’t own 3 pairs of tweezers, we’d consider closing that gap for you. Bygones.

We feel it’s time to remind you that nothing comes for free in this world. We sat back silently as you cut us, tweezed us, dyed us, did this shit to us:and now we’re fighting back. You have officially crossed the line. The price you pay for that awesome head of hair is this; we will grow wherever we damn well choose, and you will deal with it. Can’t handle a few little hairs around your belly button? Not. Our. Problem.

What is comes down to is this…yesterday, that thing you did in the bathroom with the hot wax? That means war. Do you not realize that the hair we grow on your upper lip is delicate? It’s like our babies. And you murdered them. You ripped them out AT THEIR ROOTS and we can’t ever get them back. We are devastated and we will get you for this. It may take us a few weeks, but we’re sending new ones in. We suggest you leave them alone.

We appreciate that you don’t have either a degree in biology or esthetics, in fact, we know your lazy, drunk ass never even went to college. Allow us to explain something to you; we grow on your lip for a reason. For your protection. We grow on your eyelids and in your nose for the same damned reason. Mother Nature is not one to be toyed with.

Are you aware that they used hot wax as a form of torture in the Spanish Inquisition (no one expects it, you know)? It is considered inhumane. Cruel. AND unusual. This isn’t Guantanamo Bay, toots.

Your punishment for this most unspeakable offense is that we have spoken to the skin, and we’re going to make you burn. And then the skin is going to get all dry. Dry, and splotchy. You’re going to look like you have a really bad sunburn, maybe even chicken pox, for at least THREE days. It’s going to itch. It’s going to sting. And don’t think we overlooked the Great Chin-hair Massacre of 2007, either. We noticed, and now you will, too. Your mother and her mother and her mother, too, all had the same 3 hairs growing out of their chins that you do. You don’t see them running around ripping those hairs out, do yah? Sure, none of them have been laid since Juice Newton was in the top 40, but we’re not the reproductive system, so we care not.

And we swear to god on high, if you so much as think about using that wax anywhere south of our equator, we’re going medieval on your ass. Don’t try us. You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry.

Sincerely,

Your Follicles.