It has been barely hours since I had the last of the anti-virals I was prescribed for shingles and I am starting to miss those tiny buggers already. Am I going too fast for you? Let me back up a bit...So, some time last week, I started developing these rashes on one side of my torso. PS: I do understand that the word 'rashes' is not very high up on the list of things that figure in a work of art. I mean, it is not every day that you pick up a Mills and Boon paperback and flip the pages to find,"..and Rosalinda's hazel eyes were filled with the blazing light of love as she set sight on Jean-Pierre's rash-filled bare chested body". But please be so kind as to excuse the usage this once. PPS: Another reason why you don't see one of these lines in an M&B - you can be pretty sure that anybody with 'Jean-Pierre' for a name is gay..What I mean is that when it comes to sexual preferences, you pretty much seal the kid's fate the moment you name him 'Jean-Pierre' and you know that he is going to be on the lookout for Dominiques, Jacqueses and Guillaumes rather than going for the good old Rosalindas roaming the free world, who I might add are a lot closer to terra firma for us less adventurous blokes. But then, as always, I digress. The point is that after the first couple of days during which the reaction to a rash was more of a 'this discolouration is a pain the arse', changed to something like 'I wonder how long its going to be before I die of this cancerous lesion'. So its with these disturbing thoughts of the Grim Reaper doing whatever the Grim Reapers do to transfer their clientele to the after-world that I went into the triage nurse's office post-haste on the Thursday after the 4th of July holiday. The preliminary examinations by the nurse concluded, I was beckoned into the doctor's office where he asks me to show him my rashes. The ever-obliging gentleman I am, I strip to show him my torso. I am telling him,"My rashes itch and hurt..","These could be boils.." blah blah when he gives me a condscending smile and tells me,"These are not boils or rashes. Its shingles you have." (I could almost hear the background music you hear whenever you are watching a movie and the you see the hero fighting his way through the crowd to rescue his young puppy from the evil clutches of men in the dog pound when he realises that his pup is already dead and that it was his long-lost twin brother who shot it. Its beside the point that the brothers would join forces before the climax and bash up the King of Dogpoundaria who controls all the dog pounds in the world..For the more pedestrian and imaginatively challenged folks, you can always relate to the music that plays when Luke Skywalker finds out that Darth Vader is his father). Anyways, he said that I had shingles and proceeded on to tell me what shingles was. This he starts by saying,"So the Herpes Zoster virus..". The rest of the sentence was lost on me thanks to that one magical word "Herpes". I mean, given that I am a man who has spent pretty much all the time when he was supposed to be getting laid looking on the internet for information on STDs and how to avoid it, it is but natural that I got a jolt when I heard that I was infected with a virus which has 'Herpes' in its name. It was like Thor was trying to wake me up gently with his lightnings. But in the doctor's defence, he did tell me immediately, and I might add barely moments before I started wondering whether people get STDs by dreaming about sex (that's a scary thought, innit?!), that this was not one of those viruses which you hear people talk about and that this is a relapse of chicken pox.
The diagnosis performed, the doctor gives me a week's worth of anti-viral tablets and asks me to dunk in two tablets at a time, five times a day. With four grams of anti-viral getting into your system every few hours, you are bound to have some side-effects right? Well, with me, it was this psychadelic dream I had involving my Royal Enfield 350CC Machismo, naïve pygmy women with suicidal tendencies, other pygmy women who got turned on every time I said "Asyptotic Equipartition Principle" and strangers who offered prize-winning lottery tickets for 50% of the wins (don't even ask). Without going into too much details (which would invariably embarrass you more than it would me), it would suffice to say that popping in those tiny little buggers did to me what alcohol hasn't managed to do in ages. Today, it has been exactly a week since I started indulging in the anti-viral vice and the course got completed yesterday. With little chance of a refill, I think the last of these guys is already in and out of my system. I miss them. Heck, I am in depression. I think I will just go and hang myself from the nearest ceiling. Baah!
PS: I think any suicide note is incomplete without "It's better to burn out than to fade away". So here it is.
PPS: As I was remarking the other day, think of the irony of it. Of all numbers in the world, Pi is not a ROUND number. Why, I ask why?! Just thought I'd mention it before it vapourizes from that little head of mine.
PPPS: You think I am going to kill myself. You wish!..
