i have herpes zoaster

just when you thought you are living a pretty normal life, it hits you. you start scratching, your skin feels hot, you get little small blisters in random places. you start feeling something is not right.

you finally manage to overcome your well-founded fear of medical diagnoses, and visit the school physician. at the first sight of the pink developing blisters, she begins asking you standard questions she probably learned in medical school,

"when did this start?"

"what have you been doing?"

"is it painful?"

"i'm not gonna touch you, okay, it might be infectious. are you okay?"



after some last-minute O(n) searching in what seems like a database of medical symptoms all arranged in efficient hash-tables in the physician's mind, she utters the haunting line: "You have herpes zoaster."

herpes? isn't that an STD? turns out, the herpes virus has many cousins. this particular kin, zoaster, resides dormant in everyone who just had chikenpox, until stress excites them. it's perfectly normal, the good doctor informs me, except that there has been no known cure for this virus strain and there have been reported cases of people being blind after the virus infected their eyes. WHAT?! it's bad enough that i have a sex virus' relative living in me, now i'm at risk of being blind!!!

after i broke the news to my friends, they looked at me quizzically and began asking what sort of sexual activity i have participated in during the weekend. i kept repeating that i did not have an STD, and that no, i have a sex life of a ten-year old child thank you very much for asking. they dismissed my protest, and safely concluded that i might have been drinking to much to remember anything. great.

the virus is localized in my right arm. my blisters are now healing and are succesffuly developing into dry scabs. that, however, have not changed the fact that people look at me and turn the opposite direction in a heartbeat. neil took one look at my arm, and screamed, "disgusting!" i miss touching my eyes, as i have not done it for two weeks now for fear of contaminating them with the virus, thereby making me blind.

but in case i become blind, i pledge to start the Worldwide Herpes Zoaster Foundation for Unfortunate People Who Would Have Done Perfectly Well Without The Damn Buggers.