Shingles - Experience
Please describe your experience with shingles.
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What is shingles? What causes shingles?
Shingles is a skin rash caused by a nerve and skin inflammation from the same virus that previously caused chickenpox. This virus is called the varicella zoster virus (VZV) and belongs to the herpes family of viruses. After an individual has chickenpox, this virus lives dormant in the nervous system and is never fully cleared from the body. Under certain circumstances, such as emotional stress, immune deficiency (from AIDS or chemotherapy), or with cancer, the virus reactivates and causes shingles. In most cases of shingles, however, a cause for the reactivation of the virus is never found. Anyone who has ever had chickenpox is at risk for the development of shingles, although it occurs most commonly in people over the age of 60. It has been estimated that up to 1,000,000 cases of shingles occur each year in the U.S.
The herpes virus that causes shingles and chickenpox is not the same as the herpes viruses that causes genital herpes (which can be sexually transmitted) or herpes mouth sores. Shingles is medically termed herpes zoster.
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Quickly...1978, first round of Herpes, and future bouts came with a sticker pain in right ear, traveled down to mouth causing Herpes outbreak. Years of this. Fast forward to near 50 years old. Headache where half of face itched, stung, burned, ached in right temple, ear ache, worst headache ever. Neuralgic pain as well. Doctor prescribed meds for migraine. No success. Still got the headaches, aching, and itching and neuralgia, ear pain. Pain jumps from ear to eye to forehead to cheek to teeth back to temple. Eyelid burns and did have droopy eyelid about a year ago. Prescribed Neurontin from neurologist. Helps. I don't know if it is shingles or herpes. I did only have 1 or 2 extremely painful pimples, twice in temple area, another time once on temple, chin. Get "hot spots" on half of affected side of head like neuralgia. Mostly confined to the right side, where original Herpes symptoms started. Deal with on a monthly basis. Just getting over a bout, having itching in the area and have to be careful not to get upset, as if it isn't "finished", will get another round of it. This time, dull ache temples, eye pain, nose pain, burning eyelid and eye blurry, itching. Neurontin. I don't know what I would do without it. I feel like I am the only person who has this and hope that this helps if there is anyone out there with similar symptoms.
I'm 54 year old woman. Last month I had an attack of severe emotional pain. I couldn't do anything. This has happened to me three or four times in the past two years. This time I kept a close watch at what happened. It lasted about 40 minutes. I have mental illness but this is new. It took 8 days to recover fully. During that time I got pain in my neck and left shoulder down my back. I got a rash in the middle of my back on the left side a couple days later. I had no idea. I left for a trip to see my daughter get married planning on traveling and visiting people over the next month. Someone told me it looked like shingles but I thought if it was it was a mild case because the pain went away and the rash was small. It did seem to spread under my left arm and under my breast but just a few bumps. The only difference was that they crusted over and they are still there six weeks later! I went to the doctor today because five days ago a terrible ache started under my shoulder blade. Over the past couple days the pain spread through to my chest. The rash was never all that bad but this pain is intolerable. It makes me cry! At night is the worst. So now I am on pain meds and hoping that I don't have nerve damage. I wish I had not let this go on so long. What is interesting is that the month before I was exposed to shingles while visiting a friend with them. I think I caught them from her even though I had chicken pox as a child. I am otherwise very healthy and never get sick, although I do have a dissociative disorder that is pretty tough to deal with 24/7. So that might have triggered the immune deficiency. But I was exposed and stayed at her house. I also was re-exposed on returning home from another friend too. I never have seen so many people with shingles in my life.
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