Shingles: The Dormant Dweller
I was working in my workshop on Wednesday, March 10, and I was feeling this irritation on the left side of my back and just under my chest, also on the left. It felt like something I’d experienced before, and it would always turn out to be something with one of my shirts. Changing shirts would remedy the problem, and I just moved on from there. This time was a little different.
The next morning came around, and when I looked in the bathroom mirror, I noticed a small rash on my chest and back, where the irritation was felt the prior day. I was still attributing this to my shirts. I kept a dryer sheet in the dresser drawer which housed my t-shirts to keep them smelling fresh (they would occasionally have a weird smell after sitting in the drawer for a while). I thought maybe the dryer sheet was causing the problem, so I decided to just wash ALL of my t-shirts in the drawer and go from there.
On Saturday, Lisa and I drove down to Lakeland to go to the lumber yard I frequent for materials for projects. We were looking for supplies for a picture frame for another of her cross stitch projects, as well as for a Christmas present I had planned for later in the year. It’s a rather long drive down there from our house (about an hour and 45 minutes), but this drive was worse for some reason. On the entire trip down there, I was getting this wave of aching in my chest (about where the blisters were). It would last for a couple of seconds and then go away for about 10 seconds, then repeat again. It was like this the entire way down there.
On the way back, Lisa did the driving and I sat in the passenger seat trying to get through this recurring and irritating aching. It wasn’t a sharp pain, but it was still noticeable. When we were walking around the lumber yard, the pain wasn’t quite as apparent, but when sitting still it just sucked. No sitting position provided any relief.
Sunday morning rolled around and I was in our bathroom after taking a shower. As I was looking at the now more widespread rash and blisters on my chest in the mirror, it suddenly dawned on me what this might be...shingles. I had chickenpox before, some 30 years ago all the way back in 8th grade, so shingles was plausible. I checked out what the Mayo Clinic website had on shingles and it only confirmed what I had feared. Based on the locations of the rash/blisters, the sensitivity, and the pain, it was all but confirmed that I had shingles. There wasn’t any real course of action to take as far as treatment, other than a waiting game for things to clear up on their own. I was consigned to the fact that I was likely going to be miserable for the next couple of weeks.
Just to cover all bases, on Monday I sent a message to both my neurologist and my primary care physician laying out my symptoms and asking if there was anything else I should do, especially concerning my MS. A couple of hours later I received a call from my neurologist’s office. I was told that one potential long-term problem that could affect me, long after the shingles cleared up, was postherpetic neuralgia. This is where damaged nerve fibers send exaggerated pain signals from the skin to the brain. Because of this, I was prescribed a 10-day treatment of Valacyclovir. This was an anti-viral drug that was widely taken to treat a multitude of things, one of which is shingles. It would help clear up the shingles more quickly and, hopefully, lessen the likelihood of experiencing postherpetic neuralgia.
Lisa went out to retrieve my prescription, and I took my first dose that same day. The pill was not overly huge, but I still opted to split it in half anyway, as that was something the pharmacist said would be alright for this pill. It was much easier going down than it probably would have been as a whole pill. I’m not big on having to swallow pills, but I’ll bite the bullet when I need to do so.
I wasn’t sleeping very well at this point. Come Tuesday morning, as I was laying in bed, I felt an overwhelming and piercing pain in my chest. HOLY FUCK!!! That was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. The throbbing pain I experienced after the surgery on my finger felt better than that. It felt like I got stabbed in the chest by an ice pick. These sharp pains were becoming a little more consistent, so I started taking some Ibuprofen in hopes it would quell the pain a bit. After the second dose, the pain began to subside a little. I would occasionally get similar pains in my back, but they weren’t anywhere as sharp as the ones in my chest.
Wednesday morning was upon me. I got maybe a couple of hours sleep the night before. I just could not get comfortable in bed. Sleeping on the couch provided no relief either. If I was running on fumes before this, I don’t know what I was running on at this point. I continued taking my daily dose of Valacyclovir. I don’t know if it was a side effect of this drug, but I started to get the worst sinus headache I’d had in a long time. The pressure was almost overwhelming.
On top of that, my back was really starting to hurt. It wasn’t just my lower back, but almost my entire spine. When I would walk barefoot on the floor, every step was painful. I had all I could to get up from the couch and walk to the dinner table. A heating pad provided some relief, but as soon as it was removed, my back would start hurting again. I kept taking Ibuprofen when the pain was too much, but I hated doing that. I can usually get through pain, for the most part, but this was like nothing I’d felt before.
One thing I did notice, while I was experiencing the horrible back pain, was that my Lhermitte's sign was a lot stronger than it had been in a number of years. One time I bent my neck forward, like I normally do to see how my Lhermitte’s sign is fairing, and I felt a painful electrical jolt in my lower back…WOW!!! That kind of jolt had never happened before. I opted to refrain from bending my head down for a little while, in hopes that my condition would improve.
Thursday came around and I was starting to feel better, but only just. My back was still hurting, but it wasn’t quite as bad as the previous day. I made sure to have my sneakers on inside the house all of the time. This provided shock absorption for my back when walking around. There’s not a lot of cushioning under foot in Florida houses, even with carpeting. Despite the back pain, the blisters and rash seemed to level out. I was still experiencing the sharp ice pick pains, but they weren’t as frequent as they were on Tuesday.
Throughout all of my ordeal, I was continuing to drink a ton of water. I needed to stay hydrated in hopes that it would help with my sinuses. I did notice some relief from the sinus pressure as the days passed, so clearly that was getting better. I could almost bend all the way over, but don’t dare ask me to shake my head. I think my head would have exploded if I shook it too hard.
By Thursday night, I was beyond exhausted. Over the previous three or four days I’d gotten maybe 10-12 hours of sleep in total. I went to bed Thursday night at 2200 and I was dead to the world. I don’t think I woke up one time in the middle of the night and I slept until almost 0600 Friday morning. I felt so refreshed. That was the best night’s sleep I’d gotten in almost three weeks.
Through Friday and over the following weekend I kept seeing improvements in all aspects of my condition. The blisters were subsiding greatly and were finally scabbing over, my headache was nearly gone, and the horrible back pain I was experiencing was almost nonexistent. In addition, my Lhermitte’s had gone back to “normal”. I’d turned a corner, finally, and was on the road to recovery. I was still experiencing the chest and back pains, but the sharp piercings were not present anymore. The pains were still irritating, but not to the point of doubling over like I had earlier the previous week.
Monday and Tuesday showed more improvements and I was winding down my prescription of Valacyclovir, with only one more dose on Wednesday. While the blisters were all scabbed-over at this point, wearing any kind of t-shirt still bugged me. The skin where the rash was still experienced a weird sensation when rubbed against with a shirt. The same goes while under the covers in bed. If I’m just lying still, everything is fine. When I move around, I will get that weird feeling on my chest and back. It’s slowly improving, but it’s still an annoyance.
Come Thursday, March 25, I finally finished with my treatment of Valacyclovir. I went out into my workshop for the first time in almost two weeks and it was so very nice to do so. I only spent an hour or so in there in the morning as I didn’t want to overdo things. I got just a bit of progress made on my new workbench. Over the ensuing days, I slowly increased my time in the shop. Speaking of stamina, I didn’t do any exercise throughout the duration of having shingles. I had little to no energy most days, not to mention the horrible back pain would have made for an unpleasant jaunt around the neighborhood.
As of today, April 7, I’m feeling SOOOOOO much better. There are still pink spots on my back and chest where the rash had set up shop, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. It’s been slowly fading as I complete my recovery, and the sensations on my chest and back are almost 100% back to normal.
Overall, shingles was an experience that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The rash and the blisters weren’t too much to deal with, but those sharp and excruciating ice pick-like jabs into my chest and back were like no pain I’d ever experienced in my life previously. Even my mother-in-law, who had shingles many years ago, said the pains she experienced were second only to the pains of childbirth. If I don’t go through another round with shingles for the rest of my life, that would be just fine with me.
