I was in pain just reading the OP. I had DVT in my calf and thigh in 1999 but it was diagnosed right away and I was hospitalized for seven days. I was miserable, but not in pain. I guess I don’t what misery truly is. Good luck yo you Aqua Pura.
P.S. 1- Do not let the fuckers at work mess with you. Get a lawyer. This happened on the job, you have a lot of leeway here.
P.S. 2- The boyfriend? I went back and read the OP a second time and I don’t know what everyone is on him about. He took her to the emergency room, and seemed genuinely concerned. What am I missing?
Abby, you missed where I said he was in the doghouse for making me go get my PICC line in by myself. It was a very brief doghousing, considering he took me back the next day to get it fixed and then out for waffles.
So, in other words, your 21 yr friend was immunosuppressed. Things like chemo will decrease the immune system. Viruses like varicella (which causes shingles) EBV (mono) and CMV, hang around in the body for years after exposure. When the immune system take a hit, those nice little white blood cells are no longer floating around keeping the viruses in check. And Boom! They’re back! It’s definitely not unusual to see shingles in such a person.
The OP on the other hand, as far as we know, has no reason to be immunosuppressed and it is quite unusual that she would develop shingles at such a young age.
As far as the face thing - you are correct. That’s not unusual, and in fact, there is an entire disease named for it - zoster keratitis. Now, zoster keratitis specifically refers to shingles on the face with involvement of the cornea. But, still, it’s not uncommon in the elderly or immunosuppressed. OP - did they have someone take a look at your eyes at some point during this mess? Like, with a slit lamp? Might not be a bad idea, especially if you are having vision changes.
The key with shingles is that it tends to follow the dermatones (http://www.maturespine.com/images/dermatomes.gif) of the body because of the way the virus reactivates. I don’t know if the OP’s did this. It sounds like she had multiple infections going, and it might have been tough to tell where one started and the other began.
A PICC line is an intravenous line that can be left in place for weeks. Good for the chronically ill requiring lots of medications and blood draws or for people going home on long term antibiotic therapy.
Shingles this young IS unusual, but not unheard of, and is most likely why I was misdiagnosed. And considering I work at an eye doctors office, and then went to an ophthalmologist for followup care once things started getting hinky I have been done slit lamped to DEATH in the beginning, Remember? They were looking for eeny weeny pieces of glass? They even flipped my lids over and scraped them.
Now, for the first batch of shingles, it showed no corneal involvement, so it was just zoster. Which, while unusual is not uncommon when paired with a serious injury or infection, and ya’ll remember I had MRSA running around up there for quite awhile. The zosters dermatatome seems to be confined to the trigeminal nerve. The first outbreak, I kind of looked like the Target dog.
Now, for my second follow up outbreak, I have yet to see the ophthalmologist, though I am about to set up the appointment to see her. Why? Because I suspect corneal involvement, there are blisters on the tip of my nose and on the underside of my lower lid. Also, my eye is red and inflamed again. So lesse, its tomorrow with the infectious disease doc, and some other day this week with the ophthalmologist.
AquaPura, what a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad experience! I’ve had a mild case of shingles, which is only a tiny fraction of what you’ve been through lately, and I was feeling quite sorry for myself. I can hardly imagine having all of that happen… OMG!
Agreed. Just didn’t think using an example of someone who is immunosuppressed was a great argument to make for “it can happen to anybody.”
Good - glad you are seeing the optho doc. Something could have changed from the first series of exams. Hope it’s not keratitis. Eye stuff always squicks me out. Gory trauma - no problem. Someone poking at an eyeball - no, thanks. I want nothing to do with that.
AquaPura, I read your OP a few times, and I couldn’t respond, I was crying for you. I hope your health gets back to normal soon, and that there is no permanent damage to your eyes.
My first husband got shingles when he had travelled to Europe one summer to defend his doctoral dissertation. He had always been in perfect health, and he was only 26 yo, so I know this can happen to a young person. He was terribly stressed out by the dissertation stuff, hardly slept for days before he left for Europe. I wonder if that sort of thing can affect your immune system.
Luckily he was staying with his parents for a month so he had support as well as medical care.
What the infectious disease specialist said after I had my first MRSA infection, my gastroenteritis induced by norovirus, and my second MRSA infection. After each and every one I was told my resistance would be low, I was vulnerable to secondary infections, and any herpes infections I had had in the past might resurface from cold sores to, yes, shingles. Fortunately, I didn’t have a bought with shingles during any of them although, like anyone who has ever had chicken pox, I am at risk for them.
Sorry, that probably isn’t the sort of cite you were looking for, but I tend to take the word of medical professionals who have expertise in such areas.
I second Broomstick’s cite. My infectious disease doctor ALSO told me that I would be at risk for opportunistic infections. Conjunctivitis and a corneal scratch set off the shingles, which set off MRSA as a superinfection. The fact that I had MRSA made re-occurence of the shingles not unlikely as I already had a low immune system. The fact that I had MRSA took the one set of drugs that work really well for shingles infections out of the arsenal. Steroids. They make you more immunodeficient.
Broomstick, I love your giant face zit story, I still think you win because you got emergency surgery. I just seem to have pissed off a particularly mischievous djinn.
You probably got the MRSA because of a breakdown in your skin, which acts as a natural protection against infection. Nowadays, greater than 50% of community-acquired staph infections are MRSA, so it’s not that surprising that yours was MRSA.
I’d be shocked that a conjunctivitis immunosuppressed you to the extent that you got shingles. Sometimes people just have terrible luck, and stress can reactive shingles.
Cite:
From Lancet Infect Dis. 2004 Jan;4(1):26-33. “What does epidemiology tell us about risk factors for herpes zoster?” Reactivation of latent varicella zoster virus as herpes zoster is thought to result from waning of specific cell-mediated immunity, but little is known about its determinants in individuals with no underlying immunosuppression. Risk factors identified in analytical studies that could explain this variation included age, sex, ethnicity, genetic susceptibility, exogenous boosting of immunity from varicella contacts, underlying cell-mediated immune disorders, mechanical trauma, psychological stress, and immunotoxin exposure.
Use of antibiotics can also induce secondary infections, particularly GI bugs because of the disruption of normal flora. And like I said, stress can reactivate these things too. It’s not necessarily that you were immunosuppressed.
There are lots and lots of misinformation in medicine, and sadly, a lot of what docs do isn’t as evidence based as we’d like.
Also - I’m curious. How do you know that your gastro was norovirus?
I’m not trying to be confrontational. It’s just that my experience is that gastro isn’t treated, particularly viral gastro, so no one usually bothers ID’ing the bug.
Incidental… Is it that you don’t believe the progression of my disease or what? IAMNAD, I just tell you what they told me, and I didn’t say that the conjunctivitis immunosuppressed me enough that I got shingles, rather, the conjunctivitis along with the traumatic corneal injury set off the shingles. That I got MRSA from the open wounds from the cellulits put me at risk for MRSA again.
Or, at least that is what the cadre of doctor persons so far have said.
