June 21, 2007
If you didn't have time to visit this website on the main page last week, please take a look at it now.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/shingles/DS00098
On Wednesday I found some zits in my scalp and started feeling funny.
There was quite a bit of swelling and sensitivity to touch on Thursday
The VA diagnosed it as Shingles and my primary care Physician sent me up to have my eye examined. . . . . it was OK. They put me on meds despite my being border line late to start, just to protect the eye.
By Friday night my skin broke out and the pain was unbearable. Being alcoholic I was reluctant to mount the slippery slope of pain killers but at 2 AM Saturday I went to the VA Emergency ward and got a shot plus some script for Perkoset. And the pain became just bearable. The eye swelling was at max.
(I just now noticed that my swollen eye almost looks like a pair of lips)
=)
Sunday brought the beginning of the end of the skin eruptions but the pain persisted.
The Perkoset's effect is accumulative, you don't take it as needed, you take it as prescribed. By mid week I had quit the Perkoset and it was just fine.
Within a week I was pretty much in the clear and no scarring.
The residual pain afterward is called postherpetic neuralgia and I only got a little. I sometimes feel something crawling around in that eyebrow and a couple times a day I feel a pin stab there too. All that just reminds me how fortunate I am to not have worse. As I mentioned on last weeks main page; I've read of postherpetic neuralgia pain being second only to cancer as the motivation for senior suicide.
click to go . . .
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