Be Familiar With Shingles Rash Symptoms

By Carolyn Brooks


Whether the information is for your own personal need or you are a caretaker, it is important to know the shingles rash symptoms. If caught early on, the length of stay can be shortened. In addition, this is often confused with other conditions, so such an awareness can help prevent exorbitant medical costs for labs and radiology charges.

It is not commonly known that this condition originated from the varicella-zoster virus, which caused us to have chickenpox. This virus, like many, lies dormant in the body throughout life. As body chemistry changes, as it does with middle-aging on into the elderly status, this virus can on the body once again.

Pain is generally the first thing a patient will notice. This is key because some caretakers become nonplussed when their patient complains of various aches and pains throughout the day. While this is a natural tendency for many people, it is important to pay attention to the complains your patients make in order to notice if there are any changes to their daily list of aches.

To keep the matter confusing, sometimes one who experiences the pain does not experience an outbreak. It helps to start writing a personal medical journal or blog in order to remember where your worst chickenpox break out occurred when you were young. This may the location of pain later on, and you will want to make sure your caretaker knows about this.

Having the outbreak occur on the right or the left of the torso is painful, but generally heals without further problems or complications to the patient. In some cases the outbreaks occur on the face, and these need to be seen by a doctor right away. If it impacts the eyes, one can experience a permanent disability of sight as a result.

Many who experience the pain will never have an actual outbreak. This makes it difficult to diagnose the cause of the pain they are experiencing, so providing a full and complete medical history for any caretakers is critically important. A great deal of time and money can be wasted attempting to determine the cause of such pain, and this can cause caretakers to give your complaints less attention in the future.

Anyone over the age of sixty should consider seeing their doctor in the event of an outbreak, no matter what their health status is. However, this is even more important if they have an autoimmune disease or are receiving chemo. Naturally, such details should have already been shared with any caretakers they have so they can make the right decisions on their behalf.

This connection between a weakened immunity and an outbreak is unmistakable, and may be the only etiology we need know. Fortunately for many, two vaccines have been developed to deal with these outbreaks. While they are not going to help anyone currently experiencing this condition, they can prevent them from occurring, or at least lessen the impact they can have on the health of an individual.

Of particular note is the fact that not every person who had chickenpox growing up will get suffer from this. Lowered immunity is apparently what gives rise to these outbreaks. The reasons for this are not really clearly known, but the medical community hopes it can be eradicated in time with the chickenpox vaccination.




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