I suffered a shingles attack (herpes zoster) in October-November 2007. It left me disabled and scarred, and postherpetic neuralgia still plagues me each and every day.

You know it’s bad when your doctor, a veteran with over 30 years’ experience, states, “This is the worst case of herpes zoster I’ve ever seen.” Yeah, not the second or third worst. Not just your garden variety stuff: The worst. Should I be proud?

The pain is everything you’ve ever heard it is. At one point I called on God or Satan to end my pain. I screamed out a challenge: “I will follow whichever one of you ends this pain!” (Thank God I live by myself!) Neither showed up. Neither sent a representative. I suspect the goat sacrifice wasn’t adequate. Perhaps they were going for a human sacrifice.

After two, three weeks of hospitalization, first to contain the herpes zoster, which affected…