Hum. Interesting title. What do I mean. Asphalt shingles on a river? No. How about SHINGLES shingles.
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is a painful skin rash caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus (the same virus that causes chickenpox). If you’re one of the approximately 99% of adults over 50 years old who have had chickenpox, the virus that causes shingles is already inside your body. It can reactivate at any time, and your risk increases as your immune system naturally declines with age.
Trust me on this. You do not ever want to have shingles. I’ve heard plenty of stories from people who have had it but never took their pain seriously, I guess. It is painful and itches. And did I mention it is painful? The virus attacks the nerves in any part of your body. For me it was from the middle of my chest to the middle of my back, wrapping around the left side of my body. Imagine a wasp’s nest under your armpit. All day and all night.
One day into our trip in 2020, I noticed pain in my back and itching in the middle of my spine. I was sleeping in a tent and paddling a canoe. Back pain and itching are not uncommon. By day three I was writhing in the night, clenching my muscles, and trying not to cry out. I took pain relievers but they didn’t touch it. I asked Karen to look under my armpit where some of the itching was and she saw just two small dots like bug bites. I never asked her to look at my back and didn’t see it myself until our trip was over and we were in a motel with a mirror. Yikes. It was nasty. But what was it???
The amazing thing was that while I was in more pain than I ever remember being in, I kept paddling. Perhaps ignorance of my condition or sheer determination not to ruin this once a year adventure or some combination of both got me through. I think that says more than enough about my love of adventure, being with Karen, and paddling the rivers.
But this condition was also the reason that I did not log our adventures into this blog after the first two days. With Karen’s help and the notes that she keeps on our river maps, I will try to update the blog so that we have our story to remind us of our adventures when our aging minds begin to fail us like my body did last year. Hope you can read a bit of sarcasm in there…we really plan to paddle into our senior years and sleep in tents by the rivers as long as we possibly can.
On a humorous note…we do realize we are aging and our bodies our changing. We don’t talk about it much but last summer was one of those times. Perhaps even though we didn’t know what I was suffering from, just the suffering was enough to get us pondering what we would do if one us just dropped dead while canoeing. I don’t need to elaborate but the images of what we would do got us laughing pretty hard as we kept paddling down the river.
If you are at least 50 years old and have not had your shingles vaccine, get it. I know we are tired of being poked by needles with COVID vaccines and booster shots but just go get it. And don’t worry about the price though it is too high. Knowing what I know now, I would have paid just about anything to avoid that experience.
Paddle With Us 