Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Charmian and the strange skin afflictions!

So a little history about me.  I have had the joy of baffling many doctors in my day.  You're probably thinking how can this be something that causes joy.  Well after the first few random ailments I got to the point where stumping the doctor and helping to refresh their med school memories was kind of fun.  A little scary at times but still a little amusing. 

Anyway, most of my ailments have been skin related.  It started with the normal chicken pox as a kid and cold sores not too far after that.  (I know you're thinking what's so strange about that, well just wait I'm just getting started.)  Adulthood brought erythema multiforme (an allergic reaction to all of those cold sores I was getting my whole life.) and several precancerous spots that needed to be removed.  I now have frequent skin checks and I also had to be medicated for several years to help keep me from getting cold sores which in turn would keep me from having more erythema outbreaks.

Okay well here I am pregnant and what do I do.  I break out in a rash that starts in my elbow pits (yes this is a technical body part) and then pops up in my knee pits and was spreading out from there.  I visited the doctor and at first I was told it was PUPPPs and then PEP (both of which are pregnancy induced rashes so not so strange that I got them when pregnant. 

While I was home sick with the rash I started to get a strange pain in my low chest/upper belly and my back.  About a week later I was attacked by one angry ant and I had horrible ant bites all over my back.  I was doing my best to take care of the bites when they started to spread.  So I visited the doctor again.  I walked in and told him about the ant bites and how I was afraid they were infected and how painful they were and he took one look at me and said, those aren't ant bites those are shingles.

WHAT!!!  SHINGLES!  NO WAY!!!   


Instantly I thought about the baby and asked if me having the shingles would hurt the baby in anyway.  What did he say to me  "Well there's not a lot of information on shingles in pregnancy, it is really rare to get them when you're pregnant." 

REALLY!!!  Why me?!?

After a couple more doctor's visits I have now heard from several doctors and they all say that although shingles in pregnancy is rare there is no record of anything bad happening when it occurs during the second trimester which fortunately is where I was at when I got 'em.  I'll keep you updated but for now I'm going to just sit back and hope that I don't have any other strange and unusual things happen during this pregnancy. 

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