Slightly off-topic, but I was thinking about this one today because Lin-Manuel Miranda has shingles.
And while I of course feel sorry for him–because by all accounts, shingles is a miserable illness–I’m also shocked and disturbed because I didn’t know it was possible to get shingles in your 30s. Lin is the same age I am; that means I’m susceptible too. Crap.
(Unless, of course, it only attacks obscenely talented and successful thirty-somethings, in which case I’m off the hook.)
Part of that is that he has to stay away from his new baby to avoid infecting him, which reminded me that the day I came down with chickenpox, when I was eight years old and in second grade, I went to a friend’s house after school, and there were a lot of other people there, including a lady with a new baby, and I unwittingly exposed all of them. I still feel a little guilty about that, even though it wasn’t my fault as I wasn’t symptomatic yet and didn’t even know I was sick. I never heard if the baby got sick or what happened after that. I sure hope everything turned out okay.
And as I was thinking about it, I realized that 1989 was not a good year for me health-wise, because it was only a month or two after THAT when I scratched my cornea. But that’s a story for tomorrow.
Frog of La Mancha 
I had Chicken Pox in 2nd grade and could not go on the field-trip with my class to my favorite place … The Enchanted Forest. Mak had Shingles several weeks ago, and he’s slightly younger than I. My partner Carlo had this several years back and he was over 60 at the time. Not a good pox for adults.
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No, it’s nasty stuff, and the fact that it can strike at such an early age is scary because I don’t think they’ll even consider administering the vaccine unless one is at least over 50. Even then, my mom had trouble getting Medicare to pay for it (and it’s expensive).
When I had chickenpox, I missed a visit to my school from Norman Bridwell, author of the “Clifford the Big Red Dog” books. My younger brother was in kindergarten at the time and took two of our Clifford books to school and asked Mr. Bridwell to sign one to me. But he misunderstood and signed them both to my brother. I didn’t mind, though. I appreciated what my brother tried to do for me.
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