Shingles is not a disease that gets a lot of media attention and it isn't the topic of general conversation around the office water cooler.
It should be, because it is truly the condition from hell and is preventable with the use of a recently developed vaccine, Zostavax.
In this article, I will describe what we experienced when my wife developed shingles, rather suddenly, shortly after an outing in nature to pick berries.
Incidentally, we did not know about Zostavax until after the shingles outbreak occurred, and even then, the information came from the pharmacist, not the doctor.
To begin with, during the outing my wife was bitten on her right leg by one or more insects.
The seven or eight bites were nasty and red.
She was exceptionally healthy so her immune system went to work fighting the infection.
However, within a couple of day she started to develop a serious painful rash that ran from her lower spine around her left hip to her lower abdomen.
A trip to the doctor confirmed that the rash was shingles.
Without getting too medically technical here, shingles is caused by, varicella-zoster, the same virus that causes chicken pox.
If you have had chicken pox, the virus remains dormant in your body for years and can erupt anytime later in life.
The risk of developing shingles appears to be about one in three if you have had chicken pox.
The nerve pain associated with shingles can be very severe and will typically last from a couple to several weeks.
If shingles pain isn't bad enough, the potential of severe complications appears to increase if you are over 50 years old.
One of the most severe of these is called postherpetic neuralgia which is ongoing debilitating nerve pain that continues long after the shingles rash has disappeared.
The pain is excruciating and is unrelenting.
Imagine the burning pain of a blow torch on your skin, or the feeling of constant electric shocks and then there is the feeling of shards of glass being ground into your body.
These are all different sensations that my wife has experienced.
It's an absolute nightmare.
This pain can last for years, yes years in some cases and will impair ones ability to live a normal productive life.
Unfortunately, the medical profession is not well versed in how to treat this disease.
Some medications, such as anti-depressant and anti-seizure type drugs, are usually prescribed to help with pain abatement.
Typical of most drugs, they have their undesirable side effects which further aggravate the well being of the already afflicted individual.
This chronic pain has been called by many as suicide pain.
How my wife endured it is beyond my comprehension.
For someone who has had several teeth filled over the years without taking freezing, her pain tolerance is fairly high, but the neuralgia pain moved her to tears many times.
She couldn't sleep, she had zero mobility and eventually her appetite waned as well, due to the extreme fatigue from sleep deprivation.
We researched and tried every possible therapy, and finally, after three and a half months she has started to improve.
The pain has moderated somewhat but we can't be certain when she will experience full recovery.
The sole purpose of this article is to raise awareness to the fact that the Zostavax vaccine is available to prevent shingles and its potential complications and to urge you to consult a pharmacist or health care professional if you believe you may be at risk.
This is the preventable disease from hell.
Don't volunteer for it.
Treatments are only moderately effective at best, in most cases.
Most standard or extra strength pain killers do virtually nothing for nerve pain.
Your best course of action is to avoid the disease in the first place.
I have no monetary interest in recommending the vaccine.
My only interest is that no one on the planet should suffer from this condition because of lack of information.