anatomy of a pox

Bored? Have a peek into my week:

Wednesday: Decide to opt out of knit night as I feel a bit crummier than usual.

Thursday: Wake up feeling completely out of breath, a feeling I haven't had in the longest time. 100 degree fever and eyeball headache all day (you know, where your eyeballs hurt to the touch...maybe it's just me). Thankfully Dave comes home early from his job hunt so I can lie on the couch all day. We pop by the library in the evening and I'm so winded I can't make it across a row of shelves without a break. As I'm heading to bed I notice a spot on my back, figure it's a strange zit, and think nothing more of it.

Friday: Wake up feeling just like yesterday, only not winded. Maybe I'm getting over this thing! Sometime around lunch I think to check on that spot, and when I lift up my shirt, I'm stunned. Thirty more spots have popped up! My first thought is chicken pox, but that's silly because I've had them. A strange light case when I was four, but the doctors claimed it all the same. Not to mention the number of pox parties I've attended just in case!

I hop online to see what Dr. Google has to say about the initial appearance of chicken pox and see phrases like "birth defects" and "death" that make my head swim. Time for a call to mommy...then my midwife, then dave, then work, then my midwife again and my mom again. What would we do without phones?

My midwife contacts her perinatologist in Tacoma who says that at almost 18 weeks, the baby shouldn't be put too much at risk. The risk at this point is my fever and that I might come down with a deadly pneumonia that hits 20% of pregnant women post-pox. So it is now my job to take it easy and hope for a light case, this being my second. And still I feel guilty and worry all day long about the baby, what mom wouldn't?

Saturday: My grand delusion that I might just have a mild second case is over. I wake up with hundreds of polka dots, but at this point I think if I can keep a handle on the headache then this is no big deal. At night things start to get itchy and every time I shift my weight on my back, another spot pops. Just call me human bubble wrap.

By the way, if you are an unborn baby reading this to gather advice (I know you have internet in there), please do your mother a favor and keep kicking away as you normally do at all your normal times. Playing quiet is NOT a nice game when your mom is already freaked out and unable to sleep.

Sunday: Yep, a hundred more this morning. And these are the good ones. Three inside my ear, thirty on my face, don't forget the five or six I can feel starting down my throat and the thirty-some-odd in places I'd only mention to my midwife. I'm starting to get annoyed at my fever and the itching has kicked in. Little do I know just how bad it can get when you have nothing else to think about at night. If anything so much as brushes my legs, all my nerves stand on end and jump start the itching again. I'm wishing I had my hair cut over Christmas like I'd planned. It's a tickle nuissance. Thankfully, Bella sleeps through these nights on her own side of the bed.

Hours upon hours spent thinking about people who live with this ridiculous itching every day of their lives. Finally I resort to my old compression tactic and wrap myself in a thin blanket so there's pressure on all sides of me.

Monday: Not too many this morning, but the casualties are setting in and I can tell there's going to be scars. I've got pizza face, and my back looks like a war zone. I'm going to look like a freak at work this weekend. I itch itch itch all day, except when the weather's nice and Dave takes us for drive-through coffee and a day at the park.

Thursday: The days are a blur of sitting and itching, interspersed with sunshine and projects to keep my hands busy. In the night I get up every few hours to distract my mind when the itching cannot be controlled by lotion or brainpower. Even though the pox have stopped popping up, I now have hives everywhere else, my hair, my neck, my arms, hands, feet, legs. They come and go and these imaginary itchies are worse than the real ones, since they only get more swollen the more you itch. If I can distract myself, they go away. Who in the world invented itchies like that? It's just cruel.

Here's hoping that Bella does not get the chicken pox. Most likely she won't. But tomorrow is the day that will tell - day 10 since I got mine. If she does, that's two more weeks of isolation for me, and Bella is trying her hardest to not go insane without people around. She's so much more a people person than me.

Ah the life of chicken pox.