As those of you who’ve been following me on Twitter and Facebook already know, I was diagnosed with Shingles on Friday, after having had sore muscles since Monday and a rash since Wednesday. I’ve been taking the antiviral medication Famciclovir since Friday afternoon, but that hasn’t stopped me from feeling … like this.

Well, absent the blood and the alien creature eating its way out through my stomach.

Still, what I have been feeling is a strange abdominal pain unlike any I’ve ever felt before, as if a fist is opening and closing inside me, with muscles cramping and spasming and uncramping and warring against each other in ways they never have before. So much so that I occasionally peer down and wonder what the heck is going on in there.

Several female friends have reported to me that their Shingles pain was so great it exceeded the pain of childbirth, and I am so not looking forward to my case developing in that direction. From what I’ve read, the fact I started on meds within three days of the first appearance of the rash means I’ve got a good shot at it not progressing that far, though my doctor’s anecdote that the only time he ever saw his grandfather cry was from Shingles doesn’t give me that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Only a feeling of something trying to chew itself out.

Wish me luck!