Discussion
I've been diagnosed with shingles today and of course I get it in the worst place imaginable, Inside my bloody eye! It's like having a red hot poker pushed inside your eyeball. The horrible throbbing pain is also radiating down to my jawbone and upwards to the top of my head. I can't even bare to touch my right ear!
Meanwhile my eyeball is doing a good impression of Arnie when he fell out on to Mars before they turned the air on! Off to the eye clinic tomorrow to see if i'm doing any permanent damage! Currently have blurred vision in my right eye! Has anyone had similar?
Meanwhile my eyeball is doing a good impression of Arnie when he fell out on to Mars before they turned the air on! Off to the eye clinic tomorrow to see if i'm doing any permanent damage! Currently have blurred vision in my right eye! Has anyone had similar?
OUCH. Sorry man, that really sucks big hairy ones.
I got it in a massive stripe across my torso, that was bad enough. Couldn't sit in my chair for a fortnight 'cos the side supports touched where it was. Vile.
I assume you're already on antivirals?
Take your meds, be honest with medics about how much pain you're in, don't try to 'tough it out' cos frankly it's impossible and you'll just f
k yourself up trying.
If you've also got it on your face/head, industrial quantities of Calomine lotion or similar might help a bit. You know, the thick gunky stuff that your mum probably used when you got chicken pox as a kid.
Best of luck. Wishing you swift healing - not everybody suffers for months and months...
I got it in a massive stripe across my torso, that was bad enough. Couldn't sit in my chair for a fortnight 'cos the side supports touched where it was. Vile.
I assume you're already on antivirals?
Take your meds, be honest with medics about how much pain you're in, don't try to 'tough it out' cos frankly it's impossible and you'll just f
k yourself up trying. If you've also got it on your face/head, industrial quantities of Calomine lotion or similar might help a bit. You know, the thick gunky stuff that your mum probably used when you got chicken pox as a kid.
Best of luck. Wishing you swift healing - not everybody suffers for months and months...
My condolences. Had it on my torso 18 months ago and still bear the scars. Dose up on painkillers, big style. I felt a recurrence about 2 months ago and went to my GP to tell him it was happening. Straight onto antivirals and managed to contain it. Felt rough for a couple of weeks but nothing like a full blown hit.
Good luck, hope it passes quickly.
Good luck, hope it passes quickly.
Generally, don't worry too much. Shingles represents a reactivation of the herpes zoster virus which you will have caught when you were a child, ie as 'chicken pox'. The virus lays dormant in a nerve on the base of your skull and can re-activate at various times in your life. Sometimes this can reflect an underlying immunocompromise. As long as you are fit and well it will likely be nothing more than stress, drinking too much, too many late nights looking after your kids/ and burning the candle at both ends etc etc etc. however, if you are losing weight, have loss of appetite, are losing blood from your back passage or are young then things may have to be looked into further to get to the bottom of things. Generally however nothing to worry about so don't stress.
The 'shingles' virus can reactivate in any of three branches of your trigeminal nerve( along with any other nerve in your body) that supplies the skin to your face. If it affects your forehead then it can affect your eye, much more so if it affects the tip of your nose as that indicates involvement of the nasociliary nerve that makes eye involvement more likely. Eye involvement is generally indicated by redness and generally is nothing more than a viral conjunctivitis that can be treated with an antiviral eye ointment such as Zovirax. Rarely, particularly after a few weeks, people can develop an inflammation of the front of the eye called a keratouveitis that may require a course of steroid eye drops to manage appropriately. An indication you could have this would be reduced vision or pain and discomfort when looking at bright lights. Sometimes the virus can increase the pressure imside the eye in a condition similar to glaucoma. These complications if your eye is red will only be detectable by an eye surgeon with a microscope, not your GP as they don't have the training or equipment to identify these conditions.
The pain and sensitivity of the skin to touch (neuralgia ) is due to irritation of the nerve from the virus. It will generally settle down over the next few weeks. If it doesn't however it can get quite distressing and often responds very poorly to normal pain killers such as codeine or paracetamol. It often requires special drugs from the GP such as certain antidepressants or even anti-epilepsy drugs that just so happen to be very good at reducing this sort of nerve pain as a secondary function.
An eye doctor will set you straight in the clinic tomorrow. Hope this helps.
The 'shingles' virus can reactivate in any of three branches of your trigeminal nerve( along with any other nerve in your body) that supplies the skin to your face. If it affects your forehead then it can affect your eye, much more so if it affects the tip of your nose as that indicates involvement of the nasociliary nerve that makes eye involvement more likely. Eye involvement is generally indicated by redness and generally is nothing more than a viral conjunctivitis that can be treated with an antiviral eye ointment such as Zovirax. Rarely, particularly after a few weeks, people can develop an inflammation of the front of the eye called a keratouveitis that may require a course of steroid eye drops to manage appropriately. An indication you could have this would be reduced vision or pain and discomfort when looking at bright lights. Sometimes the virus can increase the pressure imside the eye in a condition similar to glaucoma. These complications if your eye is red will only be detectable by an eye surgeon with a microscope, not your GP as they don't have the training or equipment to identify these conditions.
The pain and sensitivity of the skin to touch (neuralgia ) is due to irritation of the nerve from the virus. It will generally settle down over the next few weeks. If it doesn't however it can get quite distressing and often responds very poorly to normal pain killers such as codeine or paracetamol. It often requires special drugs from the GP such as certain antidepressants or even anti-epilepsy drugs that just so happen to be very good at reducing this sort of nerve pain as a secondary function.
An eye doctor will set you straight in the clinic tomorrow. Hope this helps.
I had shingles right next to my eye, scared the hell out of me. Fortunately, I managed to get to my GP within 72 hours and he was able to prescribe antivirals. Maybe it was fading anyway (but it really didn't feel like it) but within 8 hours of taking the antivirals, all the "heat" had gone out of it, and within 24 hours it was no longer painful and was clearly drying up and starting to heal.
So that's just a general heads-up for anyone who thinks they are having a shingles flare-up, get an urgent appointment as soon as you can, and get antivirals. In my case they really seemed to make a difference.
So that's just a general heads-up for anyone who thinks they are having a shingles flare-up, get an urgent appointment as soon as you can, and get antivirals. In my case they really seemed to make a difference.
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