I’ve taken a bit of downtime these last few weeks, in the wake of the tragic death of my grandson. The stress triggered a particularly nasty attack of shingles – it was so painful I thought I was having a heart attack! That’s what they thought at the hospital, too, as my heartbeat had turned a little strange since my last run-in with the cardio dept. It was doing something called “left bundling” which sounds scary but they assured me lots of hearts do it.

The pain and the left bundling were enough to make them want to do an angiogram. Now, you may or may not have had one of those, and in case you haven’t, I’ll tell you all about it. They open an artery, insert a stent, thread a wire through it and guide it all the way up to your heart while watching the process on screen. The sensate ability of medical people never ceases to amaze me.

As he removed the wire, the cardiologist assured me there was nothing wrong with my arteries. Just then, he glanced at my chest. “Um,” he said. “I think this is shingles.” And sure enough, by the time I got back to the ward, little blisters were merrily popping up all over the left side of my upper torso. One interesting spin-off from this was that the interns all wanted to see Real Live Shingles and so for the first time in maybe forty years I had a number of young guys lining up to look at my boobs. Gotta be something good come out of a shingles attack, I guess, but would have gladly forgone the attention to be rid of the pain.

And make no mistake, my friends, shingles is painful. Big time painful. I have given birth three times and I’ve had migraine attacks since I was nine, but I’ve never experienced pain as bad as shingles. Before the rash came out, the inside of my chest felt as if it were being attacked by sharp cutting weapons. The pain lessened slightly after the rash came out, but the painful itching of the skin compensated for that small relief. The movement of clothing against my skin alone was enough to make me whimper, woos that I am!

This was actually my second bout with the beast, and it has lasted six weeks. The first bout, four years ago, was not as bad as this and it only lasted three weeks. Yet they say that if you’re unlucky enough to get it more than once, it's usually less severe on the second round. And it’s very rare, they say, for anyone to have more than three attacks. Three? Two are more than enough, thank you.

I have high hopes that the last of the painful rash will fade away this week. I’m off to South Australia for six weeks, as I’ve run out of house-sitting gigs in Perth and besides, I want to spend time with family and friends in Adelaide and Mount Gambier. I’ll be back in Perth in September, and my first assignment will be with Timmy and Lucy, whom I lived with over the recent school holidays. They are a crazy pair, but loveable withal. And ever so cute:-)