Within this particular post, I will do my best to explain with as much detail as possible my personal experience having and dealing with a shingles rash. From what I understand many people will start feeling pain and/or itching as the rash is developing. However, in my personal occurrence the rash actually started forming way before I actually noticed any type of pain or sensations. At least that is what I believe, I by chance happen to notice small rash developing on my back a few inches below my right shoulder. Originally, I thought it was some kind of insect bites such as bedbugs which really had me worried initially, but I quickly was able to rule that out. As the rash continued to develop, I notice very sharp pain developing in the same area as the shingles rash on my back. This pain/sensation was very similar to what you would feel with a strained muscle and initially that’s what I thought it was from working out in the gym. One of my first clues to noticing something was definitely wrong, was my other shoulder with no rash felt perfectly fine. I was only developing sharp strained muscular like pains on one side of my body, the side with the slightly pinkish rash.
Within a couple of days, the rash grew from this small spot right below my shoulders to spreading across and under my armpit and finally onto one side of my chest. Basically, the rash spreads over only one side of your body per occurrence thankfully. I say thankfully because the pain and discomfort are excruciating enough as is. I was very lucky because many people will develop the shingles rash not only on their chest, back, arms but on their face as well. I can honestly say for a very long time I was extremely nervous about having a breakout upon my face. Because one of the major signs/symptoms of shingles on your face is the appearance of the rash around your eye as the skin eruption’s cover one side of your face. Which honestly doesn’t require a doctor’s visit to tell me it’s not going to be pleasant.
- If you compare the shingles rash with chicken pox pictures you can clearly see they are different in appearance. While the chickenpox skin eruptions are much more diffused, shingles on the other hand is more of a localized type of rash.
- Thankfully for me and for most people a rash does appear, which helps tremendously with a diagnosis. Having said that, you can have shingles with no rash! Shingles without a rash is called “zoster sine herpete” (ZSH). It’s not very common, generally people manifest skin eruptions to some degree.