Five years of shingles

On the eve of my fifth anniversary of contracting shingles, I woke yesterday morning with the most intense ache around my left eye in months along with a headache. I swung into my current solution: I put drops in the eye, took a Motrin, and applied an ice pack for five minutes. In about half an hour, the serious ache reduced to my normal unpleasant sensation around the eye and the headache was gone. At one point in my journey with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), the medical term for the aftermath of shingles, I applied heat, but I have determined that ice packs work better. I have been taking Nutrigold Turmeric twice a day for the past four months with no discernible impact on my postherpetic neuralgia. I have gotten a pleasant side effect from the Turmeric: an ache in the back of my right thigh that had tortured me for at least a decade each night as I tried to go to sleep disappeared. As a result, I am going to continue taking this Indian spice, Turmeric, in pill form for the foreseeable future in hopes of a cure or at least an easing of my aches and itches. Turmeric has a reputation for reducing pain and inflammations along with easing the loss of memory that afflicts the old.

Free downloads of four-star novel, BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE Better

My novel, BEN CONNOLLY in the PARIS COMMUNE, will be available for free downloads from Kindle for five Thursdays in a row: Sept. 12, Sept. 19, Sept. 26, Oct. 3, and Oct. 10, 2013. The book has had only one review, a four-star one, from a reader in the UK. He gave it the highest praise a novel can get: “Unputdownable.” The full review by S. Graham, which appeared on amazon.co.uk: “Beats Les Miserables into a cocked hat. “Based on the true account of a news reporter sent to cover the Paris Commune. Unputdownable. Sorry when it finished and am keeping it to reread another day.” Read it for free and please review it, whether you like it or not.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.