It's Shingles

I haven't written much lately. On the one hand, I've been trying to work more hours, and by the time I get home, I'm usually pretty pooped. Given the choice between writing and sleeping, I seem to settle for the latter more often than not. On the other hand, I've developed shingles on my face and in my eye, which is highly inconvenient, not to mention really quite painful. Given the choice between writing and bleating softly in pain, I seem to to settle for the latter.

I didn't even know you could get shingles in your eye. I went to the doctor when it first started and they thought it was blepheritis, and they gave me some ointment. It did no good and it kept getting worse, to the next week I had my oncologist look at it, and he went "eeek!" By then the crusty shingles rash had spread over half my face and up my forehead, and the diagnosis was easy. So I'm back on acyclovir and Neurontin, and it seems to be moderating a bit. It's still a crusty, oozy mess, and it still hurts quite a bit, but it doesn't seem as bad. At least the pain has stopped radiating all the way around to the back of my head and down into my jaw; now it's just in my eye and temple.

But having bitched about all that, it has to be said that radiation treatments continue to work. My swelling in my leg is steadily decreasing. I gauge it by whether I can see wrinkles in the sole of my foot, and whether I can see veins in the top of my foot. Both tests are once again positive; I have wrinkles and veins, and every day the swelling is less.

So what do we conclude? The cancer is being beaten back and (hopefully) killed, and the shingles is actually kind of a relief. I was worried for a while that some horrible tumor was growing behind my eye, and finding out that it was really "just" shingles was a relief. Shingles will eventually go away, though I may end up with some dandy pockmark scars on my eye and forehead. But the bottom line is that shingles isn't cancer.

I have one more week of radiation to go, then I'll have a PET scan in early July. I'm really expecting it to be good news. I can't feel any nodes anywhere, and it's obvious that the cancerous nodes in my groin are, if not dead, then very nearly dead (my radiation oncologist decided to lay on about twice the normal total dose of radiation "just to be sure", and I'm heartily in favor of being sure).

Okay. Eye hurts. Lying down.