Another day with shingles

Today was a tough day for me.

By melvil - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia

So I told my mum to meet me in Ibadan. I stay in Ibadan and she stays in Lagos. Its just a 2 hours drive. I need her to see one of my consultant and I also wanted to assess her state.

I have never experienced a neuropathic pain and so I didn't know the extent of the pain. All she complained of was pain that extends from her back to her chest.

With shingles, you experience pain along a line that doesn't cross to the other side of the body. In medicine, we call it dermatome. A dermatome is the area of the skin supplied by a nerve.

So people wo have neuropathic pain tend to feel pain around this dermatome and it is described as a pain that feels like a band.

So while taking her to see the consultant, she was not able to walk a distance because the pain was excruciating. I also discovered she was not able to rest her back on the chair. I asked her why she couldn't and she said it was painful and any small pressure or touch the pain comes alive.

I was crying within and I really didn't know what to do. I know I am a doctor and I am meant to man up but this was my mother.

I asked her if she had taken her drugs and she said she was trying to meet up with our appointment and so she couldn't take it.

Anyways, we saw the consultant and she prescribed the same drugs and encouraged her to do some things.

Some key things to note

• Shingles can be a sign of an underlying illness. Check for HIV or Diabetes mellitus. You just might clinch a diagnosis.
• Shingles is a pointer towards immunocompromise. Check for cancer or any of the above conditions.
• Old age reduces the immunity of the body and so work on your immunity when you are old.
• Some people might look at it and think its monkey pox. The striking difference is that it affects a side of your body. It doesn't affect your whole body. Monkey pox affects every part of the body and it comes as vesicles.
• Antibiotics don't treat shingles or topical antibacterial creams like FUNBACT A. It is caused by a virus and viruses run a self limiting course. So therefore the treatment is more often than not very conservative. The name of the virus is herpes zoster and not herpes simplex. They are two different virus. I will talk about it in a post to come.
• Antivirals that are given are used to reduce the severity and not to cure them. People use Acyclovir, Vanciclovir etc. The problem with Acyclovir is that it must be taken 5 times a day.
• The best thing you can do if you have shingles is to take your pain relief medications seriously. NSAIDs, opiods and neuro depressants will help reduce the pain. It will definitely heal up on its own.
• Wear 100% cotton clothes as this will prevent any form of irritation on the skin.
• Mupirocin cream will be helpful to help prevent bacterial super infection. Hydrocortisone cream too might help reduce the inflammation of the area.

I can't wait to be done with this shingles thing.

Please take care of yourself now, so you don't face the consequence later. Drink alot of water, eat healthy, and Exercise.

Thank you for reading my post.