I worked for a Dermatologist for eight years. We saw a lot of people with shingles.
Shingles is an actual infection (viral) of the nerve. It destroys the protective lining around the nerve. Until that protective lining and the nerve itself regenerate, the patient has pain.
Pain management for people post shingles can be a very serrious problem. It can actually take years for the nerve, and it's lining to regenerate.
It sounds like you had the most common type of outbreak of shingles. That's where the viral infection of shingles follows a nerve from the middle of your spine, which wraps around your body, to the front of your stomach area. You are fortunate, if it did not cause the blisters all the way around.
Because it sounds like you got on the medications early, you were able to minimize some of the damage.
I'm sorry to tell you that it's just a matter of waiting for everything to regerate. Nerves and their lining heal very slowly.
Do be sure to talk to your doctor about proper pain managment. Sometimes doctors do not take shingles pain management serriously enough. In our office we did. Over the years, we had two patients (who had other mental issues) commit suicide, because of the ongoing pain from the shingles long after the blisters healed.
Most patients had pain for 2-3 months, which got better day by day, after contracting shingles. Some rare patients still had pain several years afterwards.
It is because you got on the medication early that you have the blisters in one area, but pain in the other. You actually minimized the virus and the damage from it.
Best of luck to you, and be sure to talk to your doctor.
~Garnet
Homesteading/Farming over 20 years
Worked in the medical field over 15 years
P.S. To correct BCheeky2, shingles are what happen if you contract chicken pox a second time, however shingles are not chicken pox. Shingles are not suppose to be contageous to other people, unlike chicken pox. That is what all the medical books state. However that is debatable. We had 5 older women who all worked as together as receptionist in a closed in glass cubical, who came down with shingles one after the other.
Answered by
anser
at
May 14, 2010 05:43 AM
