“Wait, really?”
“Isn’t that an old person disease?”
“Are you secretly 65? You look GOOD!”
Yes folks, I, at age 34, had to battle shingles on my left leg. I wanted to share my story in case it 1) helps you notice early warning signs and/or 2) gives you a good laugh. If you’d prefer not to read on, I’ll provide a tl;dr summary: Shingles sucks, get the vaccine if you are eligible. Stat.
Phase 1: Nerve Weirdness
In March 2022, I started having some nerve weirdness, or “ghost bruises” as I was calling them. I would wake up in the morning and random spots on my left leg would hurt if I touched them. It wasn’t an extreme pain, but it was certainly annoying! The pain would go away after a day or two, or shift to a new location on my leg. I assumed I was not eating enough bananas and I thought nothing of it.
Phase 2: Hives
In April 2022, a small rash of hives appeared just above my left knee. I first noticed it after shaving my legs and touching wildflowers in the same day. Shaving my legs and just walking outside gives me some form of rash about 75% of the time, so naturally, I thought nothing of it.
Phase 3: Urgent Care and Dark Humor
I started treating the rash with some lotion and anti-itch cream to try to minimize discomfort. The rash still wasn’t awful, and I still assumed it was allergies. Later in April, the hives started looking more like blisters, and a few more hives were popping up, so naturally I Googled my symptoms and went down a rabbit hole. This could be anything from a fungal infection to shingles to skin cancer to spiders hatching inside my skin to… yeah, I wouldn’t recommend going that deep into the rabbit hole.
Out of an abundance of caution, I decided to swing by an Urgent Care. I’ve had similar allergy rashes in the past that have required a steroid/antibiotic/antifungal/whatevs to totally clear up, so I was 98% certain this was the case. I texted my boyfriend to let him know I was going to get it looked at.
If you are like me and use humor to cope with bad news, this part of Phase 3 is very important! I texted “Heading to Urgent Care to have my rash looked at. It’s most likely nothing, but could also be shingles? LOL.”
The doctor took one look at my leg, looked at my chart, at me, my leg, back at my chart. “Yep, that’s definitely shingles…and is this correct you are 34? Sorry…” She asked if I was stressed, and in my head I thought…we just hosted a bachelorette party in NOLA during the height of omicron, just finished up a wedding during said pandemic, inflation is super high, my salary is super low, there’s a war in Ukraine, I’m on my dang period… “Nope, nothing out of the norm stress-wise,” was my response.
When the doctor left the room to put in prescription orders, I texted my boyfriend, “Fuck. It IS shingles.” No one’s LOL-ing now.
Phase 4: Horse Pills
So I left Urgent Care in disbelief, on my way to Kroger to pick up some GIANT antiviral meds and essentially a low-dose Benedryl that the doctor prescribed. While at Kroger I also bought more giant bandaids and gauze than I will ever need in a lifetime—I wanted to be prepared for whatever hell I was about to face. I also stocked up on medical tape. And bourbon. I had to take the antiviral meds 5 times a day for 10 days, which resulted in an absurd amount of daily alarms to make sure I spaced them out every 4 hours. (7-11-3-7-11) This schedule didn’t sound tooooo bad until…
Phase 5: Night Pain
I will start by saying that I have been INCREDIBLY lucky in my bout with shingles. I have heard insane horror stories about the pain and discomfort people endure with shingles. But that being said, there were a few nights where I got zero sleep because my leg was on fire, was twitching, was painful, too uncomfortable to roll over or touch anything. The only way I can describe the pain is that it felt like my nerves were short circuiting inside my leg, resulting in a metaphorical electrical fire. Zappy. Twitching. Burning. So f—ing annoying and uncomfortable. Losing a lot of sleep on top of waking up early and staying up late to take meds was NOT fun, and I definitely took a few hours of sick time here and there just to try to sleep in the middle of the day.
Phase 6: Perfecting the Tom Holland Spider-Man Pose
So while shingles was having a good ‘ole time messing with my leg, I was trying to go about my life as normally as I could. I didn’t have a fever or any cold/flu like symptoms as some folks do—I was just tired and twitchy. Other than the few nights of sporadic pain, the rest of my time with shingles was plagued with bandaid pain! I had a giant bandaid covering a splotch of blisters on my left knee, making it difficult to bend my knee without the bandaid ripping at my leg hair. I found it difficult to bend down to do simple things like putting away clean dishes, storing clean laundry, picking up the dog for a hug he doesn’t consent to…so I started sliding my left leg straight out while bending my right. See inspo pic:
I was also tied up with rehearsals for a dance show that opened mid-May. Thanks to my leg’s limitations, one of my final poses in a dance was the Tom Holland!
The singles finished running their course sometime in May, lasting for a solid 4-5 weeks. My symptoms VASTLY improved while taking the antiviral meds, but my skin has been taking a long time to fully recover. Now in July, I am still applying body butter from time to time to encourage my skin to get back to its youthful glow (vs. its current splotchy appearance).
Was shingles the absolute worst thing I’ve experienced? Certainly not. But was it the weirdest and most annoying thing? You bet!
So if you are old enough to get a shingles vaccine, DO IT! Unfortunately, I have 2 more decades to wait, during which time, shingles can totally come back. I was hoping to prevent such a haunting, but alas, even getting shingles young and therefore being prone to it does not make you any more eligible for a vaccine. Until you are eligible then, I recommend stocking up on soothing bath bombs. And body butter. And large bandaids and medical tape for those times you want to go for a walk in shorts because it is damn hot but you don’t want to scare your neighbors with a scaly, blistery abomination for a leg. “Rollerblading accident” is a much shorter (and easier to accept) explanation than “shingles in my 30s.”
