Shingles
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I had a similar experience a couple of years ago, 89. But it was on my back. Not terribly painful. The fatigue and malaise was worse.
It’s been a disease trending younger and younger. Some theories are that with chicken pox vaccines, adults aren’t getting a regular exposure to the stuff to re-up their immunity. Would make sense - but dunno if that’s pseudoscience.
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I had a similar experience a couple of years ago, 89. But it was on my back. Not terribly painful. The fatigue and malaise was worse.
It’s been a disease trending younger and younger. Some theories are that with chicken pox vaccines, adults aren’t getting a regular exposure to the stuff to re-up their immunity. Would make sense - but dunno if that’s pseudoscience.
My understanding - from my friend’s pharmacist spouse- is that if you had exposure to the chicken pox virus as a child the same virus can result in shingles later in life. The chicken pox vaccine has little or nothing to do with contracting shingles.
Cancer patients undergoing chemo or radiation treatment and diabetics are particular high risk for contracting shingles. As are adults who are run down, work stressed or lead a high risk lifestyle that weakens their immune system..
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@Renauda That makes sense. The theory would be, since there’s less wild chicken pox virus circulating around (since the advent of the vaccine), people get fewer exposures to the virus throughout their life (most of which wouldn’t end up in shingles, but would rather act as a “re-up” of immunity)
Similar to how we all became very susceptible to regular respiratory viruses (cold, flu) after completely avoiding them for a couple of years during COVID.
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It therefore stands to reason as well that
if an adult who never had chicken pox or received the vaccine as a child, would contract the chicken pox from exposure to open shingles sores rather than shingles.It therefore stands to reason as well that
if an adult who never had chicken pox or received the vaccine as a child, would contract the chicken pox from exposure to open shingles sores rather than shingles.That was me. Never had chicken pox as a kid, and didn’t even think about getting the vaccine in 95… I was 23 and wasn’t really paying attention.
10 years ago I started breaking out in a rash and ran a 102 degree fever. Turns out an older guy at Church had shingles, and unvaccinated me got Chicken Pox from it. It’s worse for adults than kids, too.
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It therefore stands to reason as well that
if an adult who never had chicken pox or received the vaccine as a child, would contract the chicken pox from exposure to open shingles sores rather than shingles.That was me. Never had chicken pox as a kid, and didn’t even think about getting the vaccine in 95… I was 23 and wasn’t really paying attention.
10 years ago I started breaking out in a rash and ran a 102 degree fever. Turns out an older guy at Church had shingles, and unvaccinated me got Chicken Pox from it. It’s worse for adults than kids, too.
I had chicken pox and mumps as a kid but didn’t have red measles -no idea why I didn’t get it as all classmates and block friends had it in elementary school. Anyhow I took the measles antigen test end of February this year and it came up negative. Three days later I received the vaccine. Glad I did because there now an outbreak of measles in the city.
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I’m trying to figure out when I need to get my Shingles vaccine. I’ve heard that having chicken pox confers a number of years immunity…
The Brad
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I’m trying to figure out when I need to get my Shingles vaccine. I’ve heard that having chicken pox confers a number of years immunity…
What Mik said.
The risk of long term nerve damage from shingles increases with one’s age. A former reservist cohort of mine, a gunner, was deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. No surprise! He contracted facial shingles when he was 65. When he recovered he was stone deaf in both ears.
So if you can’t avoid shingles at least try to mitigate it with the two stage vaccine.
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@mark good luck on the knee surgery later. I've had some coworkers who got it and the rehab is a PITA but overall their quality of life improved a lot.
Shingles update... it's been a week and I just finished my 7 days of antiviral pills, I'm about 80% healed up...glad it wasn't worse. I'll get the shingles vaccines whenever my doctor lets me, normally it's suggested once you turn 50 but I guess I'm ahead of that game, ugh.
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You do know that with the sloughing of cells containing RNA particles, you can't have sex for 30 days after the last lesion heals.
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You do know that with the sloughing of cells containing RNA particles, you can't have sex for 30 days after the last lesion heals.
