Shingles...

[Gossman Knives]

Clydetz, try the oatmeal bath like I mentioned in my last post. It will help to dry up the blisters and relieve any itching. Hope you get well soon. Believe me I know how you're feeling. Take care.
Scott

 

[Icon of Sin]

Clydetz, try the oatmeal bath like I mentioned in my last post. It will help to dry up the blisters and relieve any itching. Hope you get well soon. Believe me I know how you're feeling. Take care.
Scott

Yeah this helps big time with Chicken Pox, I have used this in the past with them.

Shingles must suck, I never had them but when I get married last July we had to get a different priest to do the ceremony because the week of our wedding our priest (who was a relative and actually married my in-laws) got shingles. We really wanted to use the other priest but he was in to much pain to come down.

 

[grommit]

My dad had shingles last year, and he says that the first 10 days were really painful, but the full course lasted three weeks.

If you haven't had chicken pox, I think there's a vaccine for it now. Some folks who have had the vaccine apparently still get shingles, but it's a lower incidence.

The chickenpox vaccine is supposed to save 5,000 children's lives a year. It is expected to COST 5,000 additional lives a year to shingles.

Without the periodic booster of the chickenpox virus from kids with the disease, the incidense of shingles is supposed to be worse and more frequent. While I am all for saving kids, the vaccine is more like playing God and trying to choose which people will die, not actually saving more people.

 

[mycroftt]

The chickenpox vaccine is supposed to save 5,000 children's lives a year. It is expected to COST 5,000 additional lives a year to shingles.

Without the periodic booster of the chickenpox virus from kids with the disease, the incidense of shingles is supposed to be worse and more frequent. While I am all for saving kids, the vaccine is more like playing God and trying to choose which people will die, not actually saving more people.

I'm not sure where you got those statisitics since the Center for Disease Control indicates a death rate of fewer than 100 per year (in the US) before the immunization program started becomig widespread in the mid '90s. Maybe you had some data about world-wide death rates from varicella. Please post any info if you have it as I think world-wide data is always better than US statistics because we aren't a good representative sample of what's going on in the world.

I think you're right about the value of the periodic exposures to active varicella as a "booster" to ones immunity. If we create a limited herd immunity by widespread immunizations in the US it is very likely that there will be a rebound effect some number of years down the road as everyone's immuity levels fall off over time (due to lack of "booster" exposures) and the population at large again becomes susceptible to new infections. Current data indicates the vaccine can last a long time but that data can not control for those continuing passive exposures. There will probably have to be a vaccine booster every 10 years (ka-ching, ka-ching)

I don't think development of the vaccine was a worthwhile undertaking in the first place, but now that its use is probably going to become widespread I think I would rather be vaccinated than not.

 

[Clydetz]

Just a little update...a week & a half after the shingles started, it seems with the help of medication, calamine lotion & an oatmeal bath that the blisters are drying out & scabbing over! The pain has diminished quite a bit but every once in awhile I get this sharp twinge of pain as if the nerve endings are exposed. I see the doctor again on Thursday and hopefully I'll be classified fit so I can get back to the job. Thanks for all the tips & info!