I realized I haven't posted anything about this.
About 6 weeks ago my wife started getting a temperature and cold like symptoms. She got checked and she hadcovid. She is an oncology nurse, she does chemo infusion, and she had to sit out of work for 2 weeks. I started getting cold like symptoms, stopped up nose, but never had a temperature. I quarantined with her. I never got checked, but I lost my taste too, so pretty sure I had it too. I'm gonna get checked for the antibodies soon just to see if I have them.
So then a couple of weeks ago my back started hurting really bad, at the top right of my butt muscle. I have had a kidney stone before, but it was too low for a kidney stone. But it felt just like the one I had several years ago. Very painful. I thought maybe I had pulled my muscle and it messed up my sciatic nerve. So a few days after that intense pain, and also having some pain go down my right leg (hence even more 'proof' it was my sciatic nerve), I asked my wife to rub my back where the pain was.
She starts rubbing my back and says, 'hey, you have some kind of rash or bumps here' right on the spot where it hurt. So I turn over where she can look at my leg too since it was hurting, and I had the same bumps on my right upper leg going over to my groin. She says 'I think you have shingles.' So to make a long story short, I go to the Dr and in probably what is the best response I've ever had from a Dr, he says 'what's the problem?'. I said 'I think I have shingles.' He said, 'Then you probably do.' lol. So that's what it was and he gave me an anti viral prescription, the equivalent of an antibiotic, but for a virus.
For those of you that don't know, if you've ever had chicken pox, that virus lies dormant in your body and can manifest as shingles at any time. So my wife tells me that before they put someone on chemo, they put them on anti viral pills like I was taking, and also medication to fight pneumonia, etc, because the chemo weakens the immune system. Many people on chemo get pneumonia, shingles and other things, due to the weakened immune system. I never knew that. So the shingles I believe definitely came from my immune system being weakened due to Covid. As a side note, shingles are VERY painful. lol.
One other interesting observation. I thought it was my sciatic nerve, and naturally speaking I didn't see how it was going to go away. But when my wife said 'I think you have shingles', in my mind I changed my thinking and thought, 'This is only temporary then.' The second she told me that, and I thought that, my pain probably lessened by half. It just quit hurting as bad. So that shows you the power of the mind in sickness, etc, and how it can affect your pain and other things. The second I 'believed' it was going to go away because it was 'only' shingles, the pain lessened. It was instantaneous.
Still not over the shingles yet. They have started to scab over just like chicken pox does, so I'm passed the 'contagious' stage. They still hurt some though. And if you've ever had chicken pox, you can't get shingles from somebody. You're immune.