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This is an important thread and should be taken seriously by everyone. I had either never heard of or previously ignored discussions about shingles until it hit me this last January. At first, I thought I just had a bad tooth ache in my upper right jaw that required attention. I went to the dentist and he said there was nothing wrong with any of my teeth. That is when I started to worry because the right side of my face was now getting very numb and it was tender, sore, and painful. It even occurred to me that I might be having a stroke because of the numbness. I went home and at the evening dinner table the next day my wife asked me what those blisters were that were now forming on my right check under my eye and next to my nose. After discussing the numbness and pain with her and doing a little research on the Internet, we quickly self-diagnosed the problem as shingles. I went to my doctor the next day and he confirmed it was shingles and there was no way of stopping it. It was going to run its course and I would be in for a long haul. He prescribed vicodin for the pain and neurontin to try and calm the traumatized nerves that were now shooting electrical impulses through my right facial nerve. Neither drug helped that much. I had a headache that felt like my head was going to explode. At times I felt like I wanted to curl up in a ball and kiss everything goodbye. It has been 24/7 pain for months. My entire right facial nerve was hit by the virus, from the top of my head, down through the center of my face to my chin. The virus's strategy is to travel down through whichever nerve it targets and seriously damage it all the way to the nerve ends. You can literally see the tracks of the nerve by the line of blisters that erupt on the skin's surface. It is now July and I am still suffering with pain across my cheek and below my eye. I have weird tickling nerve sensations when the wind blows on my cheek, itchiness across my nose and cheek, and constant pain at the outer corner of my eye whenever I blink my eye.

I have studied this illness and have come to these conclusions. Herpes Zoster is the chicken pox virus and once it infects your body it never leaves. After you recover from the pox, the virus retreats into your nerve ganglia and remains there as long as your immune system is able to suppress it. Your immune system keeps it at bay with antibodies built up at the time of the pox infection. However, these antibodies diminish in time and you then become vulnerable to a shingles outbreak, especially if your immune system becomes otherwise compromised by another disease or illness. The recently developed live virus vaccine is meant to trigger or excite your immune system into replacing the depleted antibodies. I have been told that even after a bout with the shingles, you should consider getting the vaccine after a year or after you have recovered from the shingles. The only way to describe the living shingles hell is that the pain is excruciating and the recovery is excruciatingly slow. If you are over 50, please consult with your doctor about getting the vaccine. You should not feel comfortable even if you have never had the chicken pox or if you have been previously vaccinated against the pox. Consult with your doctor. The shingles vaccine is not 100% effective, but anything to improve your odds against getting shingles is worth every penny it costs.