Agony

Not having been ill that often, I'd always been particularly twitchy about the fact that I'd never had Chicken Pox. I picked up by osmosis that it was much worse to get it as an adult (not with the same specific horrors as mumps, but...) and the thought of all that itching for days on end, well... I just didn't like the sound of it at all.

I even asked my travel doctor if she thought it was worth getting the varicella vaccine. Sister Mary*, however, was having none of it. "You're almost 40 and have lived in London half your life!" she exclaimed. "There's no way you've never had the pox!"

(looking back, the idea that some people have this without realising it makes me wants to hit them with saucepans, but since they're presumably 5 years old I'll probably let them off)

No matter how many times I insisted that I hadn't, there was no convincing her. And since I wanted to be immune to it, in the end I stopped arguing. This is what people do when they are told something they want to hear.

And, like most things that are what you want to hear, it turned out to be total and utter bollocks.

I knew I'd been exposed (cricket club AGM, of all places - 36 year old fellow sufferer from the more isolated plains of New Zealand). I'd checked the immunity status of my fellow actors (all fine, though worrying about it gave me a reputation as a hypochondriac). The most likely time for me to come down the main illness was right in the middle of show-week, but I made it through to the cast party with nothing worse than fatigue and dizziness, and frankly - being a bit of a wuss -  I don't need to be ill for that to happen.

I didn't drink much at the party and got home just as England were knocking off the winning runs to go 2-1 up against India. Naturally, hangover or not, I expected to spend a lot of Sunday asleep. When I barely woke up at all, the tiny part of me that was conscious had a very bad feeling.

For those who don't know, from what I've read Chicken Pox in adults is nasty for three reasons. Firstly, the flu-like bit of it, where you feel like you've been run over by Boris Johnson's pants, is more severe than it is in children; more drawn out and more painful. This then can lead to complications, like pneumonia or the inflammation of practically every organ going, up to and including the testes (orchitis, the latter is called: I'll never look at Shagrat and Gorbag the same way again). Finally, the pox itself follows less predictable pattern than it apparently does with children, with the spots turning up anywhere on the skin and mucus membranes. And I mean anywhere. I'd rather be struck down by tiny vampires; at least they stay out of places where they're uninvited.

For all the massive whinge of this entry, I seem to have avoided complications of any kind, apart from a couple of infected spots that I'd idly scratched before I'd realised what was happening (one is under my eyebrow - this may be fun). But the whole experience was still truly horrible. What noone tells you (and I feel like I've read every webpage going on the illness, to the extent I was correcting NHS Direct at one point) is that it fucking hurts. It's agony. "Unbearable itchiness" doesn't begin to describe it. I felt like I was being devoured by giant ants or stung by wasps. A further rare complication is necrotising fasciitis , and there were times when it did indeed feel like a million organisms were munching on my skin. Fucking itchy? I think the medical profession is desperately trying to avoid scaring the bejeezus out of the 10% of adults who didn't have the Pox as a child. And the strongest painkiller they'll prescribe for this torment? Paracetamol.

Of course, the intensity of the pain does eventually go and is replaced by the legendary itchiness, though again 'itchy' summons up images of comedy itching powder in a cartoon character's underwear or people desperately rubbing at their hay-fevered eyes. This was just a wave of slightly smaller ants. Not scratching is never an problem - your body instinctively understands that to scratch this would just lead to bits of your own body coming off on your hands.

But you want the relief and sensation of scratching nonetheless. There are no creams, lotions or shampoos that can truly relieve this, and the sleep-depriving intensity of it drove me to drinking whisky and popping ibropufen at the same time. Fortunately, that stage lasted only 24 hours, and - several days in - I finally reached the 'annoying and uncomfortable' stage that - I suspect - is everyone else's default supposition of what having Chicken Pox is like.  

Now I look like Pinhead with aluminium alopecia and have learned that my tendency to buy only skin-tight clothing really does have its drawbacks, but I am essentially on the mend. And this is it, no matter how much of a ranty blog mood something like this puts you in, you do get through it in the end. It's only a week, after all. But poxless adults - do not take anyone's word for your immunity. If someone gives you a sniff of a chance to get the varicella vaccine, bite their hands off, before a thousand fiery ants start biting you. 

Spotty.

PS: If you think you've been exposed, apparently the vaccine still works after exposure and before symptoms, so don't sit back and wait for a week of evil. You do not want this.
 
* she isn't called Sister Mary.  But she really ought to be.