I had shingles in early 2008. It was miserable and I still have scars on my cornea. I had had a migraine for a few days and then got this weird sore, which I assumed was psoriasis for some reason (wasn’t thinking clearly) on my eyebrow. Another popped up to the immediate right of my eye. Eventually, more sores started popping up all along the outside edge of my eye and it started to swell shut. I had to hold my eye open to drive myself to the ER at 2 a.m. (our son had an upper-respiratory virus bad enough he had to go to the ER the next night).
I looked like Quasimodo for almost two weeks and sliced off a chunk of my thumb on the mandonline slicer when I insisted on cooking after being out of commission for a week. Apparently depth perception isn’t very good when you can’t see out of one eye.
I’m sorry you’re going through this. Feel better soon.
My husband had it around his eye too. He went in for the pain (and he’s not the type to feel pain much) before too many eruptions came through. He was told he was lucky he came in when he did because it could have led to blindness if left untreated.
My sympathies. I got shingles around my eye last Easter and I still get twinges in my optical nerve. Ouch. I don’t think I have any visible scars, though.
Dear god, I had no idea this shit could be so painful and possible disfiguring. I thought it was just like a milder outbreak of chicken pox.
And looking at pictures of the rash, I’m pretty sure I’ve had it before. No diagnosis, but I got so many rashes and skin freak-outs between 1998 and 2009 I had given up going to the doctor for them.
I’d put shingles and gout right there at about 9 on the pain scale, the only worse thing I can image would be what William Wallace went through there at the end of Braveheart.
I felt your pain back in college and hope both that the med have come along way and your discomfort is short lived.
Boy I hope that this is something that usually only strikes once. When I was 32 I felt a strange sensation on my back and noticed clusters of red bumps there. Didn’t hurt much, but it was weird enough that I felt a visit to the doctor was in order.
He immediately diagnosed me as having shingles and prescribed some medication. I promptly went on vacation with my family with nothing more than a weird sensation and the constant vigilance needed to avoid giving my wife chicken pox. It was all gone by the time we returned from our trip.
Hearing what everyone else has to say about shingles, I always consider that I dodged the bullet with that one. Hope it doesn’t come back.
To the OP: May your experience with shingles be as dull and uneventful as mine.
My girlfriend has had a few outbreaks of shingles, and now suffers from postherpetic neuralgia, which is a rare development of shingles. It sucks mightily, because traditional analgesics do nothing to curb the pain. She has a prescription for an anti-depressant/sleeping aid that gives relief, but it basically means that beginning about an hour after she takes it, she sleeps for 9-10 hours straight.
I’ve had it - only once so far - and the pain was fairly severe. I don’t remember the dose of vicodin or oxycontin, but I remember it only managed to dull the pain even though i was fairly intoxicated.
God, that reminds me of when I had a melanoma removed from my cheek. The doc prescribed a cream called Aldara, which is mainly used for GENITAL WARTS, as she so kindly announced to the entire pharmacy.
Wow, I guess I am lucky.
When I had chicken poxs (at around 35 years old) I just had a few poxs on my back maybe 20 or so. Had to stay home from work was a nice vacation with my boys. And when I had shingles just a few on the right side of my back and again I had to stay hmoe from work. Very little disconfort.
You might consider taking propolis as a supplement to prevent/reduce outbreaks of shingles.
I take it to treats HSV I and II (yeah, the regular HERPES). It works better for me than acyclovir or valcyclovir, it’s a lot less expensive, and you don’t need a prescription.
Propolis is a bee product. Bees make it from tree sap and use it to seal up holes in their nests and mummify any critter that crawls in and is too big for them to remove. It has antibiotic, antiviral, and antifungal properties. There’s a fair amount of studies on the use of propolis if you go to pubmed.gov and do a search for “herpes propolis”. The majority of the studies have been on herpes simplex virus as opposed to herpes zoster, but as they belong to the same family of viruses and work in similar ways - living in nerve cells to escape the immune system and then occasionally causing painful outbreaks - I think it might help shingles as well.
I’ve even made a paste of lidocaine and propolis powder to apply topically, and it helped heal the blisters about twice as fast as without.
Caveat: always check with your doctor and pharmacist to make sure there are no contraindications. If you’ve ever been sensitive or allergic to bee stings, stay the hell away from it.
I had shingles when I was 20 years old. Diagnosed myself (the doctor confirmed). It was a mild case, like a minor case of poison ivy I guess, except I’ve never had a poison ivy breakout. No scars or anything. No chicken pox scars either.
Most people don’t know but once you have had chicken pox, you automatically will have the shingles virus in your nervous tissue. And you could have an outbreak of shingles any time throughout the rest of your life. You may not have an outbreak for the next 60 years but make no mistake, the shingles virus is there, will remain there forever and could happen anytime.
From my memory, the onslaught of shingles can be due to a host of conditions. It may be depression, anxiety, a recent, deeply emotional change … the list goes on.
I believe something like 85 percent of the people living in America have had chicken pox.
The only good thing about shingles is it is not contagious. But that really isn’t all that because most of us have it in our body anyway.
I’d thought mine was a weirdly-located (belly) poison ivy about the size of a quarter. A friend encouraged me to get it looked at. Imagine my surprise at finding: a) I had shingles (and thought WTF is a shingle?) and b) I wasn’t allowed back to work until they were gone. Seems I work with many people from all different countries who may never have had chicken pox, and i could give it to them. And, on top of that, it’s very dangerous for adults!
Now that I read all your stories, I realize I got away cheap.