Anyone here who has had really bad shingles pain, what would you compare it to? Is it the kind of stuff you need hardcore painkillers for?
Reason I ask is that my granny who was thought to have had a kidney infection is in hospital as of now. Basically it seems that somehow when the doctors were feeling around her kidneys they didnt’ take her shirt off :mad: (or at least I assume that) cause on her back around her kidneys was shingles.
She’s in hospital now while they decide whether she just has shingles or whether she also has some kind of kidney stone or some other thing I forget, or something worse.
This was supposed to be a minorish kidney infection a few days ago! :mad:
Anyway she’s definitely in a shitload of pain and is that plausible for just shingles? She is not a malingerer so when she says that she’s in pain she’s definitely in pain.
I had shingles in 1974, an also ended up in the hospital. It was horrible and excruciatingly painful, but the worst was the lingering pain that would pop up unexpectedly for the next year. I couldn’t wear anything around my waist for months. They didn’t have the medicine that they do today, so there wasn’t much to do about it but suffer. It was horrible, and I was only 23, not your grandmother’s age.
I have had shingles once and it was very painful. My late husband would get shingles and have no pain at all. But his shingles were very different than what I had.
So painful that a few days before the rash broke out, I had to go to the after hours clinic with incredible crushing chest pain. I’m a 46 year old woman and I was secretly frightened that I was having a heart attack. The dr couldn’t find any damage or evidence that my heart was in trouble and he thought it might be that the day before I’d picked up and then dropped a box because it was too heavy for me.
When the shingles came out about four days later the doctor that diagnosed me said that indeed the pain was the nerves starting. Mine were on my neck so the nerve that serves the front of my chest was involved. It was awful. The rash was itchy burny tingly painful but the other nerve pain was sudden, shocking pain that was unpredictable when it came. I got shingles in March and was mostly over the pain by the summer but I actually had two “nerve shots” today so it’s not completely cleared.
So yes, breathtakingly painful. The hospital were willing to refer me to a pain clinic but in the end I didn’t go because just knowing it was shingles and not my heart made me not scared and I figured it would just work itself out.
My elderly mother suffered like nothing I have ever seen. No pain meds helped in any appreciable way. Years later she has persistent pain in her neck, where it started. It was terrible.
When David Letterman had shingles he was out for over a week (two weeks? It was a long time). Shingles pain is really awful; your granny’s experience isn’t extraordinary.
Had it on my leg a month or so back, and didn’t even feel it, except that my entire leg felt a bit more sensitive than normal. I only noticed because I saw the bumps- at first I thought it was a mild poison ivy rash.
Looked up the symptoms online, figured out it was shingles. Called up my doctor and described it her, and she said, “Yep, shingles”. She gave me a scrip and it was cleared up within a week.
My sister had it on her head. She said it’s the most excruciating painful thing she’s ever experienced, and this is someone who was going through chemo at the time. Because her immune system was suppressed, the shingles took a very long time to go away. She was on serious oxy during the time, which still didn’t completely damp out the pain.
My father got them last month, and he’s STILL dealing with the effects. He lost about twenty pounds, I’d say and he’s still trying to regain the weight. The doctor gave him percocet just to deal with the pain. They don’t deal out narcotics just for minor infections.
He could hardly sit with his back against a chair.
My ex-wife had shingles on her side. Looked like just a few tiny red bumps but she said it felt like a red-hot branding iron had been pressed against her skin. Took her to the emergency room where the diagnosis was made. There wasn’t much they could do and she just had to wait it out. As I recall it only took a few days though. I think knowing what was, was half the battle.
Shingles affects different people to different degrees. I have had three attacks in my life, the first was the most painful, but not severally so. and the last two were painfully annoying more that anything. However, my wife had her first attack recently and suffered to the point of crying out in agony.
It is important to get shingles diagnosed and treated as soon as the symptoms start - even as early as the preliminary super-sensitive stage of the affected skin area. The longer diagnosis and treatment are left, the greater the chance of long term nerve damage.
Once the chest pain stopped, I was fine. The rash was really, really burny and itchy, but I just took some Advil and was fine. My biggest thing is that I was really, really sleepy for a week or so.
Then again, I was 20. I’ve heard it’s far, far worse the older you are.
I got it a year and a half ago on my forehead and around my eye. It involved one of the nerves that leads from they eye to brain and was really excruciating. Mr.Q took me to the ER because I was incoherent with pain and had no obvious rash - he figured I was about to drop dead with a brain tumor. Anyway, lots of drugs and a three day nap later, I was functional but funny looking. The pain gradually lessened, but I have a scar on that cornea and headaches still start in that spot. I was 37 at the time. Shingles suck.
I had shingles when I was 21. It affected me on the left hand side, from the chest, up over the shoulder and down the back. The pain was bad, although not as excruciating as some people have. The worst thing that I found was that I couldn’t sleep properly for several weeks, so I simply felt exhausted.
Whopping awful, though it was it was some years ago now. It was from the spinal nerve servicing the area from my neck out to around my right shoulder. It felt like the pain sensation for that nerve had been turned up to eleven all the time: genuinely nasty. My brother, the doc, diagnosed me easily and prescribed something narcotic for the pain. Though I could still feel the pain pretty clearly in a distant way at least I could get to sleep, and there has not been a return episode.
It really does seem to vary. I’ve got a couple of patients who say it doesn’t hurt at all, and I’m all, “REALLY?! What if I poke you?” Nope, nothing.
Others would trade it for a kidney stone in a minute, and are in the position to know.
So YGrandmother’sMMV. It could be what’s causing the pain, but don’t let them cancel any planned testing prematurely. It could still be something else.
