What Was Your <b>Shingles</b> Experience Like?

So here I am, almost six weeks after developing shingles, which SHOULD be gone by now.

And it’s not.

So it turns out that the pieces of information I had about the onset of shingles, and the duration of shingles, were different for me.

My shingles didn’t begin with burning and a rash.  It began with heavy duty pain in my right shoulder blade.

And long after I should be past it, my shingles is still hanging on. The rash is 99% gone, but the pain… oh the pain.  It seems I have developed post-herpetic neuralgia, the name for shingles that lasts many weeks, months or years beyond the rash.

My frustration is that I spent quite a bit of time roaming the internet for information about that back pain I started with – and found nothing. No references to shingles and this sort of back pain.

So I want to change that for the next person who starts to have the same start-up symptom, so that he or she can figure out it’s shingles, start taking the drugs sooner, and avoid post-herptic neuralgia.  I don’t want others to suffer from shingles like I have.

How about you? If you have had shingles, what was your experience? Did you have the classic symptoms or did you have unusual ones? Any complications? How long did it last?

Read more about my experience with shingles, and then please share your experience, too.  I hope we’ll cover all the possibilities so that when someone else searches, they’ll figure out early on what their diagnosis is…

Then quicker treatment will mean a quicker recovery – I hope!

•  Share Your Shingles Experience (This is a special page for reporting – please don’t comment below with your experience – use this page instead.)

•  Read about my shingles experience - see if any of it sounds familiar to you

• And – regarding the vaccine – try Do As I Say and Not As I Do

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Agree? Disagree?

Share your experience or join the conversation!

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