Hello, still alive.

Here’s a phrase you never want to hear from your doctor "I do not like the look of this."  Excellent, doc.  Really?  What’s up with it?

About a week and a half ago, when my daughter was just over a week old, I noticed a rash under my arm.  Itchy, and a bit painful.  Like feeling tired, but more intense.  Being a complete idiot, I looked it up on NHS Direct.  The site said – shingles.  That freaked me out a bit – what if it’s shingles? What about the baby? Should I quarantine myself??  I made an appointment with my GP the next day.

I got there and saw a student doctor, who looked at it and, considering my history, was all ready to sign it off as a fungal infection.  Which is, you know, not nice but at least it’s not shingles.  He said shingles was way down on his list.  However, he wasn’t 100% certain what it was so he called the actual doctor in, who took a look at it, asked about my symptoms and said the words above.  Shingles, he pronounced.  Yup, NHS Direct was right.  Damn and blast.  Still, he said I was okay to be with baby and that was all I wanted to know.

We’re currently suffering from colic.  You might think that she, my daughter, is suffering alone, but that is to fundamentally misunderstand colic.  When a baby suffers, a baby does not suffer in silence.  When this policy of declarative discomfort is edging into your nights and fraying your days… well, at least *I* get to go to work.