Last week I was served a virus that happened to have a side order of rash (on my shoulder). Can you tell it’s lunch time? Little did I realize it was something special! On late Saturday I let my fingers do some searching via google and everything kept pointing towards shingles. What a pain, quite literally! So I had the folks at immediate care check it out Monday morning and yep, its shingles! Should be interesting to witness how the nerve endings react at my age. Hopefully better than getting it at 60+.
Apparently I also ordered some hypertension as well. Oh, the joys of stress and no exercise for quite some time!
Sticks, Stones, and Paper Stew Blog 
Oh, Gale, I feel for you. I had shingles two years ago, and they’re awful. You need to respect them. Which means that you need to rest and to treat the pain as fully as you can; the doctor I had at Immediate Care (where they were diagnosed) believes that if you treat the pain during, you’re less likely to get post-herpetic neuralgia. You may still get twinges every now and again (I do), but not ongoing pain. (Also, the vaccine can keep you from getting them again, but, unlike Chicken Pox, they’re not a one-time thing, unfortunately.)
If you’re not already taking about 1800 mg of Neurontin a day for it, ask your doctor for a script. It helps with neurological pain and works well combined with the pain meds. Really, don’t be brave and “tough it out.” Get people to drive you places (I can help out, if you need) if you’re concerned about driving on percoset or vicodin. And rest, rest, rest! Be glad this happened after Hawaii!
Let me know if I can help.
Wow! Thanks Melissa for the info. Fortunately there isn’t a lot of pain, at least not yet, more like a dull muscle ache that flares up from time to time. The blisters were initially painful when my clothing brushed against it, but it’s not causing much fuss at this point. My main complaint is fatigue & being sick is a wast of valuable time. I’ll give you a jingle if I need anything. Do you clean houses and do windows? 😉
I’m sorry to hear you had such a bad go round with it. Yikes!
I was surprised at how many people younger than 50 revisit this virus. The chicken pox didn’t visit me until age 21 and it was not a good scene! My doctor today said her daughter had shingles at age 11. Amazing. She also said most people have no idea what pushed their bodies to reactivate the virus. At least I have a vague idea why my body decided to dance with this virus again… Stress!
Wow! Sorry for you. And I thought I was having a bad couple weeks! A kid in my highschool had it, too, so it’s not always just adults that get it. Are you taking the Neurontin (Gabapentin)? I take this every day (in a much lower dose than that mentioned above). It seems fairly benign but does actually help some…so in high doses and for something so specific, I’m sure it would help.
Yes, it probably is a good thing that you didn’t get it in Hawaii. Then again, you probably weren’t all that stressed out in Hawaii.