|
|
As a college student, Renee Humbert didn’t think she was at risk of developing
shingles. “For the first few
days I felt like maybe I had appendicitis on the lower
right side of my body just really a lot o pain and I didn’t know what it was.” After
the initial pain, Renee said her shingles symptoms started to become clearer. “The
first visual symptoms came up and that was a patch of small blisters on the right
side of my back, just a couple inches from my spine.” Physicians say shingles
or the herpes zoster virus is basically a more painful, adult version of chicken pox.
The virus can live in your body forever and if your immune system is compromised
it can resurface. Dr. Alan Tannenbaum is a family physician with Lee Memorial Health
System. He says shingles is fairly common, especially in older patients and can
be caused by several different factors. “Whether that’s stress, whether that’s cancer
whether that’s chemo therapy, radiation your immune system
goes down, something wakes it up and that thing takes over and when it takes over its painful, it’s horrible
it’s debilitating.” Renee says, “The pain level with Shingles was extreme in the
beginning and then it went from abdominal pain to really a skin pain meaning I could
barely stand to have a sheet lay on me for about the first week, week and a half.”
There are now many successful ways to treat shingles. But if the virus is left untreated
it can have life-long effects. Dr. Tannenbaum says, “If it’s not treated it can
be horribly disfiguring, scarring, and you usually end up in the hospital.” While
shingles is more common in elderly patients it can also develop in young adults
like Renee and middle aged patients. |
|
|
|
