Strike a wooden kitchen match. Let it catch so that the flame is reliable. Hold the opposite end securely with your thumb and forefinger. Jamb the end with the flame into your ear canal. You have just approximated the pain of Zoster-Shingles.

I had my first attack on Monday, November 20. The next day I had another. I got a break on Wednesday. By Thursday, Thanksgiving, I was paranoid, waiting for the next hammering. Still, I had no idea what it was.

Nina came to visit from New York. We were sitting, talking on Sunday afternoon. It happened again, and again and again. I screamed that we had to go to the hospital. There were no dissenters. We went right to Ward E-1, haven for transplant patients. They diagnosed it as Shingles. They said I might be there a week. They needed to refer me to the pain specialist team. I also needed a referral to the infectious disease team. I was infectious. I got a special room -solitary confinement.

Wes Brown heads up the infectious disease team. I was starting to get little bumpy things on my arms, legs and more private places. Wes had to examine me. I might have disseminated Zoster, meaning the Shingles might have gotten into my blood, an extremely life-threatening turn of events for someone like me, without an immune system. Tuesday morning Wes showed up. She’s a slim, very sexy Asian woman – a “T.V.” doctor. She got a complete examination. I had to wait until Friday for a diagnosis. Yup -disseminated. I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

I was still having Shingles attacks. The pain team, headed by Dr. Ian Carroll, whose name accurately reflects his gender, prescribed narcotics. I was to get Dilaudid on demand. They gave me a button to push whenever I was under attack. That night, the night nurse decided to install the pain meds without a second nurse being present as required by protocols. She programmed the Dilaudid for a continuous drip. When I awoke the next morning, I was addicted to narcotics and she was history in my treatment team. I had several days of painful withdrawal now to accompany the Shingles pain even as I was undergoing treatment for the disseminated Zoster.

So there I was, alone in my hospital room, loaded on narcotics. Every time I got to sleep someone came in to obtain “vitals” – the combo of blood pressure, temperature and heart rate. Then someone else would come to take blood. I was drained and brained. I looked like if the Shingles weren’t going to get me the treatment would.

By the next week-end, it was beginning to look like the anti-virals were kicking in. Incredibly to me, we were getting the upper hand. I felt well enough to dump the Dilaudid.

Wednesday, they declared me to be no longer infectious. I was quickly evicted from my single and put into a double with a very sick Filipino whose breathing sounded like Darth Vader’s and who periodically gagged and hocked into some sort of machine. The nurses confided that he belonged at home or in a hospice. They apologized for my being assigned to the same room. There was zero sleep that night.

Now that I was no longer infectious, it was time to meet Bob. Bob is a Physical Therapist, a “PT.” After nearly two weeks in bed, he had to get me up and walking. I thought that would be a good idea. Bob’s a nice guy – talks to you about his vacations in Hawaii. Before you know it, you are on a stroll around the ward; pushing your rack of metered medications before you.

They moved the Filipino out the next evening. The following afternoon, after a walk with Bob and his recommendations for an exercise routine, I got my discharge papers, along with a portable pump that infuses me with Acyclovir (since I still harbor the damn virus.)

I still have frequent pain but it is a shadow of the roasted ear canal. Nevertheless, no fun. Saturday, they told me that my graft had taken. Eighty percent of my blood cells were no longer mine but were from my donor. Finally, some good news.