a tale of shingles

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Dr. with weird symptoms of pain and skin sensitivity.  The Dr. thought I had a pulled muscle.  After that appointment I started developing little blisters.  At first I thought it was poison ivy, but after a couple of days it became abundantly clear that this little rash was not acting like the poison ivy I'd gotten all of my life.   It was super painful and it was spreading.   So I went to the Dr. exactly a week after the first visit and they took a scraping... yeah, it was pretty barbaric and painful.  Of course it was shingles, just as I had assumed after I'd done a reasonable amount of google research.

this is how it looked at my second appointment 

this is how it looked after it had crusted over

This is how it looks now with most all the scabs gone, and even at this stage it is still painful, itchy, and sensitive to any kind of touch.

Even though not all of the rash can be included in the picture because there are other patches around to my back, this is the smallest episode of shingles I've ever seen (on google).  I was expecting it to last like 2 weeks, but it only really lasted a week after it was diagnosed.  I'm surprised that the areas that had started spreading, actually went away after I started on my meds... Yay.  Praise God.  And now I can go in my pool.

So there you have it.  I wasn't going to post about this but my husband told me I should.  Hope you find it helpful.