Shingles don't go away completely (My Experience of Shingles)

Member Name: janharper

Product:	My Experience of Shingles
Date:	24/10/00 (307 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: not applicable

Disadvantages: Very painful

Shingles is caused by the herpes virus which is the one that causes chicken pox. You can't get chicken pox from a shingles sufferer, but you can get shingles from contact with chicken pox (if you've aleady had it.)

This painful condition is characterised by a line of little blisters that forms along a nerve. These blister can occur on the body, especially round the waist and on the face.

I had a line of them down the right hand side of my face. It started with a tingling sensation in my face, then I got sharp pain in my ear. I just felt generally unwell. The blisters are filled with liquid which can infect other people if they are in contact with it. After a couple of days these blisters formed scabs and looked really awful. They resembled cold sores in a line down the face. I was too ill to go out and in a great deal of pain (this is a really painful condition).

There is little a doctor can do unless this virus is caught very early on when anti viral tablets can be used. Once the blisters are there its too late. All a doctor can do is prescribe strong painkillers. This condition persisted for about four weeks with me. At least, it took that long for the scabs to heal.

The stinging pain that shoots up and down the nerve was still there six months later. Shingles is a very debilitating condition and it never clears up completely. The virus lodges itself in the nerve endings, just waiting to errupt again.

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