Hello, I'm writing this post to be of service to others who are suffering from painful post herpetic neuralgia due to shingles. I'd like to share my experience, strength and hope with you, so that hopefully you'll have a better time dealing with the extreme difficulties this pain can present. I;ve been living with this pain for over a year now. Please feel free to contact me if you'd ever like to communicate with a sympathetic person who knows what your going through. You can reach me via email at: pdebenedittis comcast net (I've written my email address this way on purpose so that spam bots don't haunt me. You know you need to use the @ and . symbols to make it a real email address, right? ) In a nutshell, I had a very extreme case. I had 2 dermatones around the right side in the area of my navel get completely covered with sores. The pain I went through was so sever, I felt like I was beaten with baseball bats several times a day for the first few months. After about 5 months it was only once a day or so that the pain was really sever, though it constantly hurt. Now, 13 months later, the deep pain is gone, except for only a twinge every now and again. I do have constant pain on my skin that ranges from annoying to crying out loud painful. I say all this so that you'll know I'm speaking from experience, not just making things up. And despite how bad things were, there are lots of reasons to be hopeful. Here are things I did that worked to help manage the pain. 1) Mediation. This is by far the most important thing I did to get my life back to where I didn't hate being alive. The results were not instant, but I started noticing good effects after only a couple of weeks. I started off using a guided mediation from the Abraham - Hicks book "Into The Vortex." It came along with a CD that had several 15-minute tracks of positive affirmations. All I had to do was just relax and breathe along with the tape, while trying not to think to much about anything. This was something I could manage as I was still pretty loopy from drugs a lot of the time. They had a track specifically on physical health and well-being. It was great! I now mediate frequently using longer disciplines where I sit up straight (which was difficult early on). Not only did my pain significantly diminish, I had a much more positive outlook on life. I found myself getting more and more happy for no reason--even though I still hurt a lot. So punt whatever beliefs you have about meditation and dive in. It's the best thing I can recommend to ease your suffering. Also consider prayer. There's a ton of studies showing it works to improve healing, even when done remotely. Get over your skepticism as there's good science showing it's a powerful aid to healing. Please contact me with your real name and I'd be happy to pray for you at least several times a week. My girlfriend and I host a Blessing circle at our home every week, so you'll get the benefit of a group of people praying for you once a week as well. 2) Drugs. Remember I'm no doctor. Be sure your medical provider is on-board before you listen to anything I say here. But for me, making friends with drugs was important. Neurontin (gabapentin) has worked best for me. The other major drug they use for nerve pain made me suicidal. I'm not kidding, the warning label even said this was a side effect for teens. I'm 54. Be careful if you take it. Start with low doses and make sure you have someone around to monitor your moods before you find yourself in too much despair. Lidocane cream is pretty good, and can be used with internal drugs. The patches are best, especially since they cover the affected area and keep it from triggering a pain flash when it's touched. One drawback though, is that you may feel good enough to move around while you wear them, which can cause a rebound effect of hurting for a few days afterward. My job is public speaking. So I needed these to get by and earn income. But be prepared with down time of a day or two (sometimes three) in between consecutive days of using patches. Aspirin. It was really helpful to me to supplement the Neurontin with over the counter pain pills. They all worked, but the ones with big chemical names can be hard on your liver. If you can take it, aspirin is a blessing. Even at extremely high doses, I didn't suffer any ill effects, and felt like I could get through my day without much trouble. Hint, get plain old aspirin. Not buffered or coated. Just chew them up and take a big drink of water. It will be easier on your stomach. Get over the taste. You'll find the nastiness isn't so bad after about a week. It's much better than all the upset the coatings and junk will put in your stomach. 3) Non drugs. Traumeel cream. Arnica cream. Very, very good stuff. Buy them at your health food store. You'll be glad you did. Especially if you wear lido patches. You have to go 12 hours in between applications. And you can't use the lido cream at that time. These homeopathic alternatives made a real difference. I found that Capsicum cream and other things like geranium oil were a real pain. They didn't give me much relief from the shingles pain and hurt a bunch everywhere else they touched my skin. 4) Devices. Early on, using a TENS unit helped a lot. It gives mild electrical shocks to the affected area. I had deep pain below the surface of my skin, and the TENS eased this quite a bit. Once the deep pain subsided, the TENS didn't do very much. Be sure you play with the amplitude and duration adjustments. Some settings are better than others. Not only will some settings not work, but they can actually make it hurt more, especially the surface skin pain. I also used a device called an Alpha Stim. It's expensive, unlike the Tens which you can buy for $50 bucks if you shop around. The Alpha Stim uses micro pulse shocks to your ear lobes to break up the patterning of your brain's ability to feel pain. It worked really well when my pain was most intense, during the first 3 months or so of this ordeal. After that, not so much. 5) Compression. This really has been a good thing. I bought a rubber weight loss belt and put it around my stomach (the infected area) before bed. It let me sleep much better as I no longer had the sheets rubbing against me. I don't use it anymore, as the discomfort it causes is now more than the pain it prevents. But for the first 8 months, it was a real blessing. You'll have to wait until all the scabs are gone before you use this. I also sleep on the side that hurts. This causes a few minutes of pain when I go to bed. But as long as I don't roll over the rest of the night, it's a better alternative that the cascade of pain that the sheets moving on me causes. By doing this I can still sleep with my girlfriend as she spoons me. The physical comfort is very healing when I get depressed. I also went and bought the softest shirts I could find. Only buy cotton, the static electricity from polyester clothes will set you off and you won't even know why. Those shirts can be really soft, but the non-natural fibers will make you end up feeling worse. I bought my shirts a little tight around the waist. This gives me the trade off of having a little annoying pain constantly, versus huge flashes of pain when the cloth rubs against me. When I'm home, I just don't wear a shirt. There you have it. I hope there has been something helpful for you in this post. Blessings, Peter D.

Dellis, I missed your last post, we posted almost simultaneously. They're not native to the Northern Territory where I live. Our dry season is too hot and dry. So wet season they're okay because of the heat and humidity, but dry season they need artificial irrigation. In north east Queensland there's a lot of rainforest because of year round rainfall, even during their "dry season". That's where they're native. Although some people say they're just an escape from introductions long ago. Dohadizzy, after having lived in Qatar you'll probably be more attuned to lush rainforest plants, having been deprived of them so much. Long time since I've been to the Gold Coast, when I'm down that way it's more the Sunshine Coast. There's plenty there, and giant Monsteras right up in trees, Elkhorns and Staghorns all over the place. I would have assumed it would have been much the same further south, even down into northern NSW. I think the furthest south growing coconut is near Port Macquarie. To move plants internationally you should get a Phytosanitary Certificate. Then you can take plants, provided there's no soil. An ordinary nursery wouldn't get involved with those but some of the internet sellers do. That other plant mixed in with the E. aureum in the photo with your husband is a Syngonium. They take over trees but their leaves get no bigger than what's in the photo. To the left of the tree looks like a Colocasia, and just back from that a Costus ginger. A lot of those smaller leaved vines are E. aureum runners coming down from high up and getting ready to take off for other trees once they hit the ground. E. aureum don't put out aerial roots as such (not like the Philodendrons do). Those on your stems just attach and hold the stem to the tree surface. Roots are also attached to the surface and run down to the ground. They don't dangle freely in the air, only the runners do.

What would he have installed other than asphalt shingles if the weather was warmer? You may be thinking of organic (cellulose/wood fiber) vs fiberglass base mats. The asphalt fiberglass shingles are thinner, lighter weight, and have a Class A fire classification, but the asphalt organic shingles are supposedly more tear resistant, more flexible in cold weather and have a Class C fire classification. The manufacturing process required for fiberglass shingles is simpler than for organic shingles since the fiberglass mat doesn't need to be saturated with asphalt before going on to be coated with a more viscose asphalt common to both types. It is the absence of the highly flammable asphalt saturant that gives the fiberglass singles it's better fire classification. The warranty periods have less to do with the quality of the shingle and more to do with marketing. If someone is willing to pay more for a shingle the manufacturer wants to be able to offer some feature in order to raise the price. Before fiberglass shingles, the weight per 100 s.f. for each shingle model was what they used to indicate quality and raise the price. Now for lightweight fiberglass shingles it's the warranty period. The company is counting on the fact that most homeowners will not be in the house for 50 years but just in case you do they pro-rate the warranty and don't include labor. In reality it's the first 5 or so years of the warranty that counts. The purpose of a warranty should not be to force the manufacturer to give you 10% of purchase price in the 45th year but to replace them in the first 5 years if they came from a bad batch. All a coating machine has to do is run at the wrong speed or the asphalt be at the wrong temperature or the filler be of a low grade for the shingles to be of poor quality in a 1/2 mile long fully automated plant. If you get past the first 5 years the shingles will probably last until you move. It is important to get a good installation warranty from the roofing contractor. The longest lasting shingles are the "architectural" or "laminated" ones. In a hot sunny climate or high altitudes, a lighter color will extend the life of an asphalt shingle longer than any other feature.

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