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AFTER A SERIES of operations I contracted shingles. In March 2014, I had a gastric bypass. This truly saved my life and both the doctor there and the care I received were fantastic.
While I knew my medical conditions would affect my recovery and my immune system would be compromised, I never expected to suffer from shingles.
About four months after the surgery, my pain increased to an unbearable level, so I attended my GP, who is amazing. He knows the level of pain I can tolerate and has kept me from going insane over the years that I’ve had Fibromyalgia (FM), a rheumatic condition with muscular and joint pain and Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN), a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal nerve.
Unbearable pain
I was assuming the extra pain was due to these ongoing conditions, flare up after surgery and an impact of the continuing weight loss and changes to my body. I was prescribed a morphine patch for the pain, which I had used in the past when pain was unmanageable and usually took one to two weeks to settle.
Within two days I was back to my doctor. The very small blister on my ear, which I previously took no heed to, had spread to the side of my face and my body. It was both itching and the pain was very bad. It was a different pain than the usual FM pain – it wasn’t moving around every few minutes and was a dull pain.
It was like I had gone a few rounds with Conor McGregor.
I was so tired and felt like falling sleep all the time, but the pain didn’t allow me to; the tiredness was absolutely awful. My GP mentioned shingles, but sent me straight to St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny to be sure. I was admitted overnight and put on antibiotics and a pain drip. The nurses explained about shingles and that it was more than likely caused by a shattered immune system.
I had been working full-time and my daughter was six years old at the time. On top of this, the build-up to the previous Christmas been hectic; we had also travelled to Arizona in January 2014 for my son’s wedding and when I returned I was very unwell with food poisoning I picked up in the airport in New York.
I hit a brick wall
Then I had a flare up of FM in February 2014 and my surgery in March. Bang, I hit a brick wall.
Shingles was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My body almost broke down. The pain, fatigue, blisters, itching, headaches and the fear that the rash would travel to my eyes just simply overwhelmed me. Luckily it didn’t spread any further; the symptoms must have lasted over a month.
I incorrectly believed that shingles was contagious. As it is caused by the reactivation of the chickenpox virus within your body, you cannot catch shingles from anyone else. However, if you have not had chickenpox, there’s a chance you may catch it from someone who has shingles.
I had chickenpox as a child and I have since learned that while the virus never leaves your body – it sits dormant and may show its ugly head as shingles many years later.
Even though I now know that shingles is not contagious, at the time I kept my eating and cleaning utensils separate and washed everything with boiling water. My husband (God love him) was thrown into the spare room as any sound was perishing my head. I mixed baking soda and water to make a paste and rubbed this over me and even wore gloves to try and stop myself from itching.
I was on antibiotics for six weeks, as well as viral cream and pain killers. Underlying conditions or not, shingles causes horrific pain and discomfort for all patients.
Today when I find myself very tired, my right ear lobe will itch and turn red, since having shingles. Chronic Pain Ireland provides an amazing service of help and support for all chronic pain suffers and with their immense knowledge and understanding, you will get through it. Having a great network of medical and care personnel I will be grand.
Carol Reddy Locke is a married mum of two living in County Carlow. If you would like more information on shingles, please visit www.shingles.ie.
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The longer it takes the more interest AIB will have to pay won’t they?
The bailout is bigger than 21 Billion, the low interest rates and DIRT @ 41% are not taken into account.
True Martin but the more interest they have to pay , the longer it will take for them to get back to profitability.
Future tax on profits written off against taxpayer covered debts.
Profits earned for a large part by charging crazy customers fees to those that bailed them out.
Investment ?!! More like theft !!
Woohoo we’ll all be rich again. I’ve an option on some apartments in Bulgaria if anyone’s interested?
Bulgaria is old news Kim, Cape Verde is where its at, the new Canaries!… Ryan Air will be flying there soon. Yer man from Cork that knows about the money is selling them!
Brendan oil own fake is it ?
I like your style Ronan, just for that I’ll throw in a hot tub.
Brendan Investments …come on now people keep up ….
The Irish taxpayer paid out €21 Billion to bail out the Bank, then the senior bailed the pension fund with over €1.5 Billion, they retired on huge Pensions. Then they closed the pension to new members. The tax payer is paying 1000 staff salaries of over €100,000. Tax payers are taken to the cleaners by the AIB. You would want to be a gxxxxxxe to Bank with them.
In 1984, AIB was bailed out, at a cost of £400 million to the Irish taxpayer, when its subsidiary (ICI) collapsed. The following year AIB paid out a dividend to its shareholders, while still in-hoc to the taxpayer.
Less than 25 years later AIB was back, cap in hand, for another draw down.
As from the last budget, it would appear, the government will, now, be incentivising even greater incompetence and negligence through its revised taxation policy.
I despise that bloody bank, really actively despise it, I have more respect for a junkie thief than I have for anyone working for it.
Saw that in the paper today, Martin. I nearly choked on me sandwich. 1000 AIB staff on over €100,000. Nothing has changed, these people live in a different world, on our money and nobody seems to care.
All the sheeple red arrowing me- the type that doff their cap to their “betters”
A bankrupt state in tatters because of AIB- generations enslaved to paying for this God awful mess and these sad sacks red arrow someone pointing out how despicable this bank is- third time being bailed out by the tax payers and it’s these clowns attitude will see them bankrupt us again.
Anybody that owes the AIB money shouldn’t pay it until they give all that money back to the taxpayers
jaysus!
yep – this is a brilliant idea and will definitely help the borrower, the lender and the State finances all in one go.
I look forward to the next economic marvel from you Denise.
Well we’ll keep it so until you do – all of it ! not 75% ……” there’s a big bonus for ye lads and a few share options Isn’t the Irish public really stupid”,
ALL OF IT !
A fraction of this €21b would fix our water system and therefore no need for any Irish Water charges
That’s like €4.5k for each citizen. That would give the local economy some boost. Can I expect a cheque in the post?
Too f***ing late AIB the people have already had to suffer from your mess
Well they could start by returning the €18 they stole from my account, which f***ed up a direct debit payment.
If we get double digits billions back from the bank we will be doing well. AIB isn’t worth 21 billion.
The big swing is the taking back the provisions for bad loans which were the worse worse case. That’s why they made big losses as they had to put huge money aside and now they don’t need it so they can take some and call it a profit.
But that’s a short term thing as the economy improves and losses reduce. They still haven’t shown they can make money long term.
IF I was a sausage I’d dance at the crossroads with a pink tutu on, while reciting the government ignored out of copyright amhran na bfhiann backwards on a bicycle !
What about some decking Kim, a hot tub and some decking and im in!! I already have one in Kusadasi.
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It’s about time we took our fingers out of our holes and marched on the banks think about what they done to this country and how easy they got away with it . FFs Ireland’s paying 42% of the over all debt of the eu, so how dose the smallest end up paying the most
Bing!
So how much will my bank shares be worth by then…??
As Paul said they will be worth “Bing”
I have got to be the worlds lousiest fairy.
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