ringing in the new year with shingles - don't recommend, 0/10

Hi everyone. It's been a rough month.

A couple of days before new years, I noticed a sudden nagging pain in my chest. It felt like a red-hot wire was being wriggled around, stabbing up at my skin from inside my chest cavity. I'm used to random aches and pains so I wrote it off and kept on with life... and then by Jan 2 I was at urgent care, DESPERATE for relief from the pain. It was a constant burning, tingling, stabbing sensation that wrapped from the center of my chest around my ribs on the left side, all the way to the center of my back. I broke out in 5 distinct clusters of rash that soon became a blistered hellscape. I can't overstate how painful it was. Unfortunately I'd taken too long to get care - I got an antiviral (Valtrex), but it did very little to limit things. I was constantly slamming pain killers so much that I gave myself intestinal problems on top of it all (my liver is probably so mad at me, lol).

It hurt to raise my arms. I'd wake up 4-5 times a night yelping. The slightest shift would make my boob rub against the worst patch of blisters and send another electric spike of pain through my ribs. I couldn't walk my dog, I couldn't do simple tasks like emptying the dishwasher, I couldn't even bathe because the water hurt too much. I was just a whimpery little blob of flesh who couldn't do a single thing. I was absolutely fucking miserable.

Well, things are better now! The blisters have gone, and I'm left with several patches of shiny discolored skin I'm pretty sure is going to scar nicely. I still have some slight pain but it's more itchy than anything now - annoying, but a huuuuge relief from the previous agony I was in.

Unfortunately... the only drawing I did over those weeks were venting doodles about the pain. It was simply too hard to concentrate on anything to do more. I'm diving back in to work now, but I wanted to give everyone an explanation as to my month-long disappearance.

And... if you, like me, had chickenpox as a kid, and you're immunocompromised... ask your doctor for a shingles shot. It's "supposed" to be an old person's illness but you really can get it at ANY age and it's absolutely brutal.

Thank you so much for your patience, everyone. I'll see you again soon with a sketchdump!