{"id":773,"date":"2011-09-12T16:28:56","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T23:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/?p=773"},"modified":"2011-09-12T16:28:56","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T23:28:56","slug":"shingles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/?p=773","title":{"rendered":"Shingles"},"content":{"rendered":"

As most of you know I’m recovering from Shingles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It takes quite a bit of effort to write anything coherent so I’ll just hit the high spots and fill in the details over the coming days.<\/p>\n

Two weekends ago on Monday August 29th I stayed home from work with what I thought was a cold. I felt weak and I had a lot of sneezing and sniffles. That went away but the next week around Wednesday I started getting a bad headache. The headache continued and I took Friday off from work.<\/p>\n

By Saturday I was starting to feel like a tooth on my left side was becoming infected. On Monday I called my dentist and asked him for some antibiotics and pain medicine and said I would make an appointment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

By Tuesday I was feeling worse and I had a slight “cold sore” on my lip and was starting to get a rash on my forehead on the left side. When I visited the dentist he said he couldn’t find a bad tooth and that he thought I should see my MD because it seemed viral to him.<\/p>\n

I went to urgent care on Tuesday night and they diagnosed it as Shingles. They sent me home with some prescriptions that we got filled for Acyclovir.<\/p>\n

The next day it was hurting a lot more and my ear was starting to swell. I called my regular doctor but he was on vacation so I dealt with his backup. He gave me a little stronger med but when I asked about seeing him I was told it wouldn’t be until the 26th.<\/p>\n

On Thursday it was becoming very difficult to stand the pain and my ear had swelled to the point where I couldn’t hear because the canal was shut. I called my doctor again and asked both for something stronger and if I could come in as soon as possible. When I hadn’t heard back from them I went back to urgent care.<\/p>\n

At urgent care I was seen by a doctor in training and a doctor. They agreed that I needed to go to Emergency which I did.<\/p>\n

At emergency the doctor said it was shingles with a secondary infection. He said the secondary infection was Cellulitis<\/a>. He also said he wanted to admit me so they could treat it aggressively.<\/p>\n

I went in that night and they ended up putting me in isolation because of the open vesicles.<\/p>\n

I spent the next 3 days getting massive amounts of antibiotics, steriods, and various pain medication including morphine and gabapentin. I got out yesterday but am still taking Acyclovir, Prednisone, and Vicodin.<\/p>\n

I understand it will likely take from 2 weeks to 2 months to heal. I hope it’s closer to the former but we shall see.<\/p>\n

Thanks to everyone who has wished me good luck and said prayers. I’ll take anything I can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As most of you know I’m recovering from Shingles. It takes quite a bit of effort to write anything coherent so I’ll just hit the high spots and fill in the details over the coming days. Two weekends ago on Monday August 29th I stayed home from work with what I thought was a cold. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":774,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}