I got SHINGLES for Summer! **Warning! Ugly pictures that might turn your stomach!**

What weirdness this has been!  For the sake of my family, some of whom have strong stomachs and enough curiosity to actually request these pictures, and I suppose for anyone who wants to know what it can be like, from the beginning on (not gone yet!), I've decided to make this post public.  If you came here and don't know me, keep in mind this is my private life I'm showing you, and I hope you can treat me with the respect you'd want for yourself.

I'm going to tell you my personal story.  There's way too much research to talk about here; this is just my own experience.

Quick edit to add this very hopeful therapy with Vit. C!  If you're just starting your shingles, please check this out, and talk to your doctor!!!  (Thanks to Maureen for the link.  :) )

Okay, so here's kind of how it went.  Mid-June of this year, I had these strange sort of clutching feelings in my chest, sort of at the lower edge of my breasts, mostly on the left.  That went on for a couple days, to the point that I was looking for unusual heart attack symptoms online.  About the second or third night of this, I was getting ready for bed, and felt an oddly sensitive area in my armpit, like a sunburn.  I couldn't see anything at all there, so I just ignored it.  The next day, I noticed more of this sun-burn-like sensitivity, looked in the mirror, and saw a rash developing below my armpit.  I showed it to my husband, who said, "Looks like shingles!"  That sent me deep into the interwebs, looking at photos (omg) and reading everything I could find.  I figured from what I read in the first couple days that my options were to get a prescription for anti-viral medication, which might or might not help, or just to wait it out, that it would probably resolve on its own in a couple weeks.

*sigh*

Had I known then what I know now, I would have rushed to the walk-in clinic at the first sensations!!  Please let me be your learning experience for you!

I decided to go with my usual non-medical-interference approach.  Here's how well that turned out.  (Yes, I had hairy armpits.  Deal.)

Shingles blisters and rash, about day 3 - back

Shingles blisters and rash, about day 3 - underarm
and chest

For the first few days of the rash developing, I was ill, like with a flu: fever, aches, exhaustion, nausea; the whole enchilada.  The pain was growing this whole time.  There was no way to get comfortable.  I was still able to wear a very soft fleece shirt, seam-side-out, but spent a lot of time lying carefully on the bed with nothing on but vinegar-soaked cloths draped across the area.  That's supposed to help soothe and dry out the rash.  If it made a difference, I'd hate to see the alternative.  My husband also helped me to daub on various simple topicals.  At this point, I think I was using aloe, coconut oil and eucalyptus essential oil.  Again, not sure any of it helped at this stage.

You can see in these first two pics that the blisters are filled with an amber fluid, not just the usual clear stuff you get in normal blisters or sunburn blisters.  The typical shingles rash supposedly stays on one side, following one dermatome, radiating (in my case) from the spine around the torso to the chest.  Mine overlapped my spine a bit, but mostly stayed on the left side of my sternum in front.

Pretty soon, I couldn't raise my arms easily, or tolerate the fleece, so I switched to large inside-out white tee shirts, cut up the front, and the arm seams cut out, leaving a big hole in the armpit area, and fastened in front with safety pins.  I could bleach them, which is important to avoid secondary infections.  Very fetching.  I'm thinking of marketing them.  It wasn't a comfortable solution, but it was the least un-painful one I could come up with.

Shingles, about day 8 or so, back.  Notice the blood- and pus-fillings.  Nice.

Yeah, that's gross.  My friend said it looks like aliens have laid eggs under my skin, which felt about right, too.  See how the blisters are now filled with pus and blood?  Cool, huh?

You can see that there are new spots popping up outside the main rash area, and on the right side.  That was scary, and by this time I was ready to go to the walk-in clinic for anti-virals, even though it was way beyond the first couple days window for true efficacy.  I was finding new spots from the top of my scalp scattered all the way to my knees.  Not good.  Systemic shingles can be dangerous to internal organs, and if you get them in your ears or eyes, can cause permanent damage to them, besides being incredibly painful.  The physician's assistant who saw me didn't even want to take more than a peek at this mess, and was pretty swift with the prescription for acyclovir.  We went straight up the street to Walmart's pharmacy to get it.  By the way, yes, this is every bit as painful as it looks.

Shingles. Blisters have begun to drain and scabs to form

No.
MORE painful.

Shingles.  Blisters are draining and scabbing over

Let me just talk about the pain for a moment.  Since shingles damages the nerves, they sort of go mad.  They just start throwing out pain signals like ... like words yelled out with no meaning.  They go through the whole pain vocabulary randomly, and loudly.  I've felt burning, stabbing, grabbing, aching, sensations like sunburn, hot oil splatters, rope burns, and aortic aneurism.  That last one sent me to the walk-in clinic a second time about a week or two after the first.  The physicians assistant got a look of fear on his face when I described that pain, of a sort of deep muscular grabbing, starting just left of my sternum and radiating straight back to my spine.  He ordered an EKG and x-rays right away, which ruled out a large aortic aneurism (I gather small ones don't hurt, and aren't usually treated 'til they get big).  I now refer to that particular pain as my I'm-sure-glad-it's-not-an-aneurism pain.  When I take the first drink of hot or cold liquids, I feel the temperature spread down through the shingles zone in a peculiar way.  Kind of refreshing or soothing, actually.

Shingles.  Note that the blisters are draining, and some of
general redness is fading.  The worst spots are deep.

Speaking of soothing, what I did find gave me some temporary relief was hot showers.  I was afraid that might hurt or make things worse, but as long as the pressure was gentle, the heat just soaked through the pain, bringing it way down.  Extrapolating from that, I got creative with methods of holding hot pads tight enough against my skin.  Ice also helps for some of the pain, so when I wasn't wearing hot pads tied on with scarves, I was carefully clutching a bag of frozen peas wrapped in fleece in my armpit 'til it melted.  I finally found that I could actually lie right on the affected zones if I didn't shift around much, and the pressure seemed to give the nerves something real to talk about or something.  That discovery along with melatonin finally allowed me to sleep almost through the night, after about 3 or 4 weeks.  Before that, I had asked my poor husband to sleep elsewhere so his movements wouldn't drag the sheet across my skin.  When the whole thing went on so long, I banished myself to the guest room, so he could sleep in his own bed undisturbed my pain issues.  It was a watershed moment when I felt like I could bring my strategic collection of pillows back to our marital bed, even though we couldn't really snuggle.

By this time, I was using vit. E oil and coconut oil on the rash, applying it 3 times a day.  I was showering - long hot showers - twice a day, and using hot wet towels in the middle of the day, and heat pads or ice in between.  I was also falling asleep in the day time every day, for hours.  From pretty early on, I started taking some supplements to help my immune system, but I was frightened to learn that my diet might have played a part in getting the shingles in the first place.  As a vegan, my diet is easily unbalanced in the two amino acids Lysine and Arginine.  That imbalance makes a happy place for herpes, and herpes zoster is the shingles virus.  Argh!  So, I've been taking lysine to help make up for it.

Shingles.  Notice how much redder this area remains.

Helpful tip: Whatever your gender, if you have hairy armpits and you get shingles, SHAVE!  That hair getting stuck in the nasty blister goo is ... really, you do not want to go there.  So much pain from such a little thing!

My back skin healed faster than the area under my arm.  Two and a half months later, this area is still the ugliest.  Oddly, one of the most sensitive areas is the top of my breast, which can't tolerate even the lightest touch without constant pain, punctuated with much stronger pains.  It doesn't look like much compared to the other areas, but whatever!  It's messed up.

Shingles.  Scabs are mostly gone, and scarring has begun

In the photos below, you can see the healing progress of the skin over the weeks.  It was hard to get clear pictures that still showed the level of redness, so add red in your mind's eye.
Other than continuing to catalogue the pain vocabulary, there's not much more to say about this.  It's still on-going, though my energy is returning, and I can tolerate the remaining pain much better.  The final pictures are from a few weeks ago now, but it looks about the same, I'd say.  I'm still wearing my oversized tee-shirts inside out, but not cutting them up the front anymore, and I can carefully snuggle with my husband now, so I call this progress.  Showers aren't as soothing at this point, which is just as well, since my skin had gotten really dried out.  I can walk my dogs again, as long as things don't get too energetic.  The sudden sharper pains are getting further and further apart, thank goodness.  I'm not needing naps every day.  I think it's safe to try painting again.  Before now, I was worried that I'd get one of these pains, and send my paintbrush in an involuntary jag across the canvas!  Not to mention, I just couldn't really stand or lean over or concentrate for any length of time.

Shingles.  Rash is thick, tight, scarring, but the worst blisters
are scabbing in

Shingles.  The redness is actually bleached out in this photo, but
the skin is healing

Shingles.  Progress ... slow ...

Shingles.  Back skin is healing (faster than nerves!)

Shingles.  Armpit and chest.  Yeah, I'm ready for bikini season!

So, there you go.  My shingles story so far.  Aren't you glad you looked?