Shingles has whooped my butt.

So, I'm a 42 year old guy who does martial arts, and about a month ago, I had noticed that I was a bit fatigued in my classes, and Friday night after coming home, had a muscle cramp in my abdomen.

Oh well, I thought lets get some electrolytes in.... and that solved the cramp, but I had this really scary other set of symptoms as well.... nausea, light headedness, tingles in my hands.... this lasted for hours.... so by 4am or so, it was off to the ER. They treated me for hypokalemia and kicked me loose, and by that time it was maybe 7am, I was feeling better, and thought that was it.

Nope.

Later the next day, the crazy symptoms again... light headedness, tingles, nausea, this time I think there were chills and some weird muscle twitches, especially in my abdomen, diarrhea and just stomach issues.... so, back to the ER, where they checked my blood, put another IV in me, and said my blood levels looked better.

So home again I went.

They told me to eat more leafy greens, and I tried that, but these symptoms, they just kept coming. They'd last hours, then subside. About a week or so later, they came back with a vengeance, and so I was like "there has got to be something really wrong with me" and off back the ER where they did blood again, urine test, and this time a CAT scan of my guts.

Nothing was wrong.

Everything was normal.

WTF?

Then a couple days later, a bit over a week or so after the symptoms started, a rash appeared. I noticed it because of some mild itching. It was on my right side, sort of under my arm. I never had any tingling or pain. Showed my wife, she was like "thats shingles". She showed her sister, who'd had shingles, and she confirmed.

So, off to the clinic to show a doc my rash.

"Yep, its shingles" and gave me a prescription for 7 days of Valcyclovir, which I ran out of a couple days back....

Anyway, I felt really good on Friday, the beginning of labor day weekend, and I'd felt better for a few days beforehand and was like "well, lets take the car out for a spin and enjoy myself a bit".... its a nice, fun car to drive, a beautiful day, holiday weekend, I feel great, and want to enjoy myself after this...

BIG mistake.

The symptoms came back again with a vengeance.

Chills, nausea, twitching muscles, lightheadedness, the whole 9 yards.

Hours of this.

I was miserable.

I am still miserable, but this is because I can still feel it in the background, lurking.... and just general malaise, low appetite, gastric stuff like irregular bowel movements, sometimes muscles twitch here and there....

Its been a month.

A whole MONTH of this!

When will it END>?

I want to get back to training and feeling better!

ETA- the rash itself never hurt. It was never really bad. I'm guessing I got on the antiviral stuff in time to head that bit of nastiness off, and for that I suppose I'm lucky and should be grateful, after reading some of the stories here..... but I really, really hate this. And I hate being confined to sitting here on my butt. Its been a month. I'm not used to this sort of thing and have never had an illness lay me low for so long. I can't even go out and drive my car. If I do very much at all, I get a relapse of those horrid symptoms..... Can anyone tell me when this will end?

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