I have now gone through my first week of shingles. Let me begin by saying this week has been like no other week in recent memory. Unfortunately for me it will go down as one of the roughest and painful weeks of my life, only second to when I had kidney stones. The shingles virus is absolutely devastating to one’s normal routine, there has been nothing normal within the last week for me whatsoever. And sadly, according to medical research and stories from others who have suffered from shingles, getting back to normal will take a few weeks at the very least. As I am writing this I am now in my second week with this viral disease, even though I feel somewhat better I am still in lots of pain as I will explain further in my shingles week 2 post.
I will explain in full detail the signs and symptoms of shingles within another post. I just wanted to describe my first week in more general terms, a quick overview of how my week ended up. To say the very least as soon as the shingles kicked in, I was in tremendous pain and felt weakness/fatigue every day of last week. The pain and discomfort started lightly but quickly ramped up to at times agonizing. I first noticed a small rash shoulder level on my back. As this shingles rash started to grow in size and length, I started noticing a deep penetrating pain within the area of the rash on my back. It is quite a similar sensation of an overworked muscle except much more concentrated and painful. I felt it every day and all day long this piercing type of pain. At times it was so painful I spent more than one day hunched over in discomfort.
The skin eruption eventually grew in size and traveled along under my armpit directly upon my chest. I must honestly warn you this rash is like no other rash I ever had before. It literally burns if any area of the rash is touched, even by your own clothes. My rash burned shirtless and even more when I had a shirt on. The shingles rash is quite sensitive to touch or any other pressure upon it, it responds by an intense burning sensation. As I said this burning sensation is quite strong it lasts all day long and night. I did not have one decent night of sleep at all last week, the pain and distress are constant. It felt like an army of fire ants marching across my chest, under my arms and my back.
Another area which was badly affected was my arm and in particular my armpit area. Thankfully the rash did not spread across my whole arm. The rash more or less stayed localized beneath my bicep which burned significantly and itch off and on. However, my armpit was a completely different story. My armpit troubled me greatly my first week with shingles, in fact still does thankfully not as badly. Basically, my armpit would burn with the slightest movement; just simply walking around became a difficult task to perform. Besides the burning, I also felt a deep penetrating piercing pain which would come and go with no rhyme or reason. There was also significant swelling, in totality It was quite unnerving and hard to deal with at times.
- Early signs and symptoms of shingles include things like burning or a shooting pain as well as tingling or itchiness, in most cases on one side of the body or facial area. The painfulness can be mild to severe. Rashes or blisters show up anywhere from one to 14 days soon after. In the event that shingles appears upon your face, it could possibly affect your eyesight or ability to hear. The aches and pains of shingles can carry on for weeks, a couple of months, and even years once the blisters have healed.