An ordeal...

(I wrote this thing 2 years back when I had just recovered from chicken pox... but I wasn't a blogger at that time... So now it comes...with some BITSian modifications)

Just out of the grasps of this terrible viral disease, I wonder what or who gave chicken pox its name! Was the chicken its first victim or did our scientists first find it in a chicken? Does eating chicken give you the chicken pox? Or is the name just a weird gift of our weird nomenclature department? I really don’t know and care just a trifle. However, it’s the disease itself, its symptoms and effects and the inefficiency of the medicines that actually worry me. What else can you expect from one who has recently suffered from a severe bout of the disease?

Chicken pox is a disease caused by the varicelli virus, belonging to the family of the herpes virus. Do check out what it looks like on wikipedia. Quite awful it is! (In today’s world you need to know what actually is affecting you; days of the principle of abstraction are again fading away… Along with C++, Java, and Oracle you also need to know the assembly language and how LC-3 actually works!)

I was laughing and chatting with friends (lacha in BITSian lingo) when one of my friends noticed a large blister like thing on my neck. Well she didn’t want to but blurted out that it could be a symptom of chicken pox. I looked at her, totally shocked. I had thought it was a mere sign of my irregularity in bathing! But…

I remembered quite well that I had taken a vaccine against Chicken Pox and it wasn’t the CP season. Moreover, I hadn’t come across any of its victims for nearly a decade now. How could the virus have infected me? Anxiety forced me (despite the financial crisis I was going through) to call up one of my friends who had had chicken pox.
Did I have slight fever? Did I feel like itching those watery blisters? Was my body aching? My mind raced through my problems for the last few days and their close resemblance to the symptoms my friend was mentioning.

The next day I obviously went to the clinic and my qualms were confirmed. “Quite a number of cases are coming in,” the doc informed. Chicken pox is an air-borne disease and the virus was in the air. The vaccine was unfortunately a failure.

My blisters started growing in size and number. In 24 hours, they had multiplied fifty times and had taken control of my body; the legs and the right hand being the only unaffected areas. The doc had prescribed 3 medicines but none seemed to actually soothe those irritating blisters. The medical world has not yet produced anything, which can help you control your fingers from wandering towards the blisters and scratching them. But YOU CAN’T SCRATCH. “Keep your hands away!” maa said. So, what does one do? Play mind games?

There’s the calamine lotion that claims to have a soothing effect but actually has very little effect: abysmal real life performance!
The anti-viral checks further spread of the virus’ army but it’s only after four days that the army stops travelling through the blood vessels happily rowing in the plasma into and out of the capillaries; injuring and shooting all cells that come in their way! Till then it’s the mind’s game.
The painkiller, true to its name, kills pain but only after an hour. Till then it’s the mind’s game.
The multi vitamin is an investment; it ensures that you don’t become easy prey to attacks by other pathogens in the near future. A kind of insurance policy! (Yeah, even in this case, there are quite a number of terms and conditions. Please read the offer document carefully before investing!)
But what about controlling itching?

There are some household remedies, I flinch at the mention of which! Neem seems to be the answer to this hideous varicelli virus.
Apply a paste of neem and homemade cream on the blisters.
Keep neem leaves around you to scratch.
Boil neem leaves in water and bathe in that water. (Disgusting?)
Apply coconut water along with karpoor (camphor) on affected areas.
The list is unending but let me terminate it here lest you stop reading. I am a firm believer in allopathic medicines but it seems doctors have no solution to some things.

Chicken pox is really awful, even more than malaria and measles. You can’t meet your friends. You can’t jump and dance. You can’t have a nice bath. You can’t scratch your body. You can’t venture out of your room……

And you can’t eat chicken. Well, I don’t really mind the last obligation; some of our purebred non-veggies do!

But there’s a kind of compensation as well. You get to forget about tuts and tests and everything and head homewards… Even the strictest of ICs following the strictest make-up policy can’t deny make-up to a CP victim; it’s after all a genuine case of sickness leading to hospitalization. (And you can easily get supporting documents as well without using unfair means!)
Without hesitating you can just leave the deserts of Pilani to go home and relax. And enjoy the sweetest of all joys…To have maa on your side…
So, you happily forgive God for all the misery He is putting you to.


And yes, one more thing… you do get a life-long guarantee that you wouldn’t have to suffer because of this strain of virus again. Mind you I wrote ‘this’ strain… Obviously you can’t help evolutionary changes (mutation, adaptation, natural selection etc)… And the act of God!!!