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Background: I was in a band during this semester. We practiced at the guitarist's house. One afternoon, I got a phone call telling me that practice was off - the guitarist was sick. It turned out that he had shingles. And a seriously bad case at that. I mean, he was non-functioning for a week, and still in pain for a couple of weeks afterward. They put him on pain killers. It completely freaked me out. After that first week, he said that it was okay for us to have practice, and this cartoon summed up my initial reaction.

(Shingles is caused by the reactivation of chicken pox virus. So it's not contagious as long as you've already had chicken pox. But you can catch chicken pox from someone with shingles.)

In April of 2003, I came down with a case of shingles. Fortunately, mine was a surprisingly minor case. I kept flashing back to all of the agony that he went through, and counted my blessings.