The song is ended but the malady lingers on

Snowbrush out in Oregon has asked for an update on my shingles. Okay. Not all of them are on the roof of my house.

That was a feeble attempt at a little joke.

If memory serves, I first noticed the shingle marks on my body on February 24th or 25th. The very next day I went to our family doctor, who confirmed that, yup, sure enough, I had shingles. He gave me a prescription for ten days worth of Valtrex (valcyclovir) along with instructions to return in ten days. Ten days later, after the V-drugs had supposedly done their stuff (although I didn’t look any different or feel any different), the doctor switched me to gabapentin (the generic equivalent of neurontin) to deal with the ongoing pain caused by shingles.

He prescribed 300 milligrams a day of gabapentin -- one 100-mg pill in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one at bedtime. After two weeks, when it wasn’t helping the pain all that much, the doctor increased the dosage to 400 milligrams a day -- one pill in the morning, one in the afternoon, and two at bedtime. He mentioned that the pills came as large as 900 milligrams and that some people took as much as 3,600 milligrams a day. I said that I didn’t want to take any more than I needed to alleviate the pain.

March came and went. April came and went. May came and went.

The only thing that didn’t go away was the pain of shingles.

Our primary care physician has been in Marietta for over twenty years, but about ten years ago we moved 25 miles away to Cherokee County. Recently, we decided to get a doctor closer to home to save money and time; we made the change in mid-May. The marks from the shingles have now begun to fade, but there is scarring and the pain has remained.

My new doctor has come up with a new diagnosis: postherpetic neuralgia (PHN).

As far as I can tell, the only difference between shingles and postherpetic neuralgia is the color of the marks left by the eruptions on your body. Mine are now pink instead of red. The pain has lessened somewhat, but it has not gone away. I still have to sleep on my right side because it is still too uncomfortable to sleep on my left side or on my back.

Three guesses what the doctor prescribed for the pain of postherpetic neuralgia and the first two guesses don’t count.

Gabapentin, that’s what. Only the dosage is different and the pills are larger.

Now I’m taking 600 milligrams a day -- a 300-milligram pill in the morning and a 300-milligram pill at night, and there are five (count ’em, FIVE) refills on the prescription.

This is what is known, I suppose, as progress.

Thank you for asking.