Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Imagine an old-fashioned corset with whalebone insets. The different thing about this corset is that sharp teeth have been embedded into the whalebone and pierce the skin of the person wearing it. That is what I experienced early in my week-long (so far) trial by shingles. Now it sort of feels like I have ten broken ribs and every so often a random one tries to poke through. This is a vast improvement, although I still cannot move without pain, breathe without pain, exist without pain.

I am not a person who deals efficiently and stoically with severe pain. Yet I have had to endure it, because OTC pain relievers like Motrin do not touch this pain. And my body has no tolerance for most opiates. They make me very ill and the last thing a person needs when her ribs feel broken is to be heaving over a toilet…