So my goal was to post on here at least every other day, but here it is January 10, six days after my last post. I have had a lot of things happen in the last week, so I won't beat myself up too much for not posting.
I started working out again this week. My friend Julie has some P90X disc from a friend. When the weather started getting cooler in the fall, and we could no longer walk the track comfortably (we're wimps that way), she offered up her extremely large basement for anyone interested in working out. We currently have about 5 or 6 other moms that show up on any given morning. We work out on one end of the basement, and the kids all play in the play area. It's nice, because there are enough other kids and toys that they pretty much entertain themselves. I try and go 3 times a week, when I don't already have stuff planned. I have lost about 5-7 lbs since I started going, but I'm probably building more muscle with this program, so I don't really focus on the weight loss as much as how the working out makes me feel.
Last week I went Wednesday and Thursday. We did plyometrics (lots of squats with some arm movements built in) on Wed. and arms/abs on Thurs. I was feeling some pain in my left hip joint, so I was thankful that we were not working on those again. Also on Wednesday I noticed a broken out area of skin on my left buttcheek. I thought maybe it was from sweating, so I took a shower, and put some acne med. on it -- called it good. By Thursday afternoon, the area was bigger, and a little itchy. I put some hydro-cortisone cream on it, and it seemed better. By Friday night it was an area about the size of my hand, red, and raised. I knew it wasn't normal, but we were heading to my hometown to clean out our storage unit, and we'd been putting that off long enough. So while Jeremy and Jonathan loaded up stuff from the unit, my mom graciously watched the boys so that I could go to a doctor and get it checked out.
Turns out I have shingles. I was taken aback when I first heard this, because I have never known anyone under the age of 80 that has had them. Thankfully I have a mild case, but the swollen lymph node and the hip pain (caused by nerve endings) were directly related to the shingles. It's caused by the chickenpox virus, which stays dormant in your system after you've had them. The main causes are weakened immune system and stress, but there are other causes as well. The virus them comes out of dormancy, travels through a pathway of nerves, and causes a breakout of shingles. They are scaly, and itchy, and in some cases can cause long term nerve pain or even bacterial skin infections. I knew that they were caused by a weakened immune system, but I felt fine physically. However, I've had a lot of stress lately; financially we're struggling a bit, and then there's the whole child custody/support issue. I will save that for another time. I thought that working out was a good outlet for my stress, but apparently I need to find other ways of dealing with it as well. I will have to research different ways of doing this. The goal is to not have this happen again.
The area is almost half the size it was after 2 days of antibiotics, and I'm feeling a little sore still, but have a feeling I will be alright by the end of the week. Shingles can be contagious to those who have not had chickenpox, but mine are in a very unexposed area, so although I am still keeping an eye on Joshua and Joseph, I'm not all that worried that they'll get it.
Here's to living life more stress free!
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