Need A Roof? I Got Shingles!

Hey Friends,
Lots going on in Ken's life the last week so let's get started with the personal, FUN side first. My good buddy Tom visited last Thursday through Saturday. I met Tom through business meetings about 10 years ago and he has been a great friend and supporter for me during the times I have gone through this health crap. He has truck accessory stores in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area and we hit it off well from the beginning. We share a passion for business, beer, and gambling (not necessarily in that order). During Tom's visit we hit the Potowatomi casino twice and fortunately both of us walked away winners; that doesn't happen very often. Thursday wasn't very good but Saturday was an excellent day for both of us. Yeehaw!! Gambling is a lot more fun when you win!
Friday we visited the Harley Davidson Museum in downtown Milwaukee and had a great time there as well. We went in not knowing what to expect and were really surprised how much we enjoyed it. If you go I highly recommend that you go on Friday and pay extra for the Back Roads Tour. This special tour costs an additional $25 and is put on by one of the museum curators. They take you into the museum archives, where they store all the pieces that are not on display in the museum. In fact many of the items are not even cataloged yet because they have so many pieces that keep being donated. They figure they have over 1 million items in the archives and only about 4500 pieces are on display for the public. Unbelievable! The coolest part of the archives is the room where they warehouse the bikes that are not on display. Over 450 bikes from 1903 to present day are palletized and stored for future display. They have a half dozen people who spend all day every day working in the archives, cataloging items, restoring bikes, and preserving items for future display. After the Back Roads Tour we spent hours in the museum proper and could have spent hours more if yours truly had not pooped out. I can tell you I will be making a return trip to finish checking everything out. And I'm not a biker! This concludes the FUN portion of today's update, now we will move on to the health updates.

I told you in a prior post about HDR Brachytherapy, the specialized form of radiation that was recommended to treat the obstinate tumor I have in my left lung. After I was healed up from my last hospital stay I decided to go ahead with this procedure and had it scheduled for this week Thursday and Friday. Well, guess what - as usual nothing in my life goes as planned. Late last week I noticed a slight rash starting on my back. We tried the usual ointments on it to clear it up but it progressed and started forming on my abdomen as well. I took pictures and sent them to my terrific nurses. They checked with the physicians assistant and called me with their diagnosis - Shingles. Holy Mackerel! What else can happen here? So anyway they prescribed a drug which should clear it up in a couple weeks. Obviously they don't want a guy with shingles hanging around the hospital so my brachytherapy has been rescheduled for 2 weeks from now, May 6th & 7th.

I guess the good thing for me is that shingles is normally quite painful because it affects the nerves but I am on so many different pain killers, including something for nerve pain, that I do not have much additional pain from this. Itching, but not so much pain. See - I really am a lucky guy!

Before I say goodbye I just wanted to mention the links I have in my post today. I've had a few questions on things I talk about in my postings so I'm hoping that by adding these that it will make it easy for you to look up more information on them. Let me know if you like them or not.

That pretty much wraps up my week. I've been told there is never a dull moment around me. But really I expect the next couple of weeks to be dull while my shingles clears up. Stress can be a trigger for shingles outbreaks so I am going to relax and try not to get worked up about anything. Breathe deep and relax, breathe deep and relax, breathe deep and relax.......

Be Well - Be Blessed!