Eat right, Exercise Regularly, Die Anyway.

No idea who said that..but this title I guess is befitting to this post.

This is my second post of 2010 on this blog. The first post was a gratitude post I wrote on the new years day. It had been 10 days since I did anything with blogging, internet marketing or anything for that matter.

I had great plans of starting 2010. I even announced the dates for my blog monetization workshop for February.

..But it loooked like everything came to a standstill on January 2nd.

That evening I went to my friend Rabin’s house to help him with a computer virus problem he was having. My friend is a doctor and he hardly knows anything about computers.

We were meeting for the first time in an year.

I spent several hours dealing with a spyware problem and finally was able to restore the machine to some acceptable performance. In between, I casually mentioned to him about some rash developing under my left ribcage.

He looked at it asked me two questions

1) Did you ever have chickenpox?

2) Did you have a mild fever lately?

When I said Yes, he instantly concluded it to be a case of Shingles

He immediately called the local Walgreen’s and made sure that I pick up the medication with in hours.

Seventeen years ago while traveling in a train in India, I got chickenpox. At that time I was told there was no medication or cure for it and that I would recover fully with in six months or so, which incidentally I did. Little did I know then that the same chickenpox virus would stay in my body and will resurface in the form of shingles in later part of my life.

Here is how wikipedia defines shingles…

Herpes zoster (or simply zoster), commonly known as shingles and also known as zona, is a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a limited area on one side of the body, often in a stripe. The initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV) causes the acute (short-lived) illness chickenpox, and generally occurs in children and young people. Once an episode of chickenpox has resolved, the virus is not eliminated from the body but can go on to cause shingles??”an illness with very different symptoms??”often many years after the initial infection.

Varicella zoster virus can become latent in the nerve cell bodies and less frequently in non-neuronal satellite cells of dorsal root, cranial nerve or autonomic ganglion,[1] without causing any symptoms.[2] Years or decades after a chickenpox infection, the virus may break out of nerve cell bodies and travel down nerve axons to cause viral infection of the skin in the region of the nerve. The virus may spread from one or more ganglia along nerves of an affected segment and infect the corresponding dermatome (an area of skin supplied by one spinal nerve) causing a painful rash.[3][4] Although the rash usually heals within two to four weeks, some sufferers experience residual nerve pain for months or years, a condition called postherpetic neuralgia. Exactly how the virus remains latent in the body, and subsequently re-activates is not understood.[1]

At first the medication I took made me drowsy and weak and for the last 10 days I had been confined to my house

Today I’m fully cured and all the rash is gone. Thank God, I have also not developed any postherpetic neuralgia or pain.

My friend as categorically warned me not to take a lot of stress, cut down my late night internet marketing activities and exercise at least 60 minutes everyday.

As a result of all this, I will be making a lot changes the way I operate. I don’t know the specifics yet but will keep you posted..

It was important that I take the antibiotics in the first 72hours of the appearance of the characteristic rash, which I did. Thanks to my friend Rabin and his computer virus problem without which I would have not gotten the antibiotics timely.

The reason why I shared this personal story with you is to encourage you to take care of yourself first in this new year and many more years to come. If you have made big plans for 2010, make sure they are realistic.

Just don’t kill yourself to create new realities. Live in the present to the fullest and welcome the future without conditions.

I close this post with a poem by Wayne Fields.

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they’ll ease
Your will they’ll mend
And charge you not a shilling.

~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

I hope you enjoyed the poem.. Now leave a comment ..:)-

To Your Abundance Health, Wealth & Success

Srini “Fully Cured From Shingles” Saripalli