With sudden, excruciating ache spreading across her physique, Viola Davis thought she’d been bitten by a toxic critter.
“I would put it a nine out of 10,” she said of the ache in an interview with People. “I was surprised how much pain it was. Hard to lay down, hard to get up, hard to walk. Nerve pain, all of that.”
But what the EGOT-winner truly had was a very common illness that impacts one in three Americans at some level in their lives.
Actress Viola Davis at the Oscars in 2012, the 12 months she was identified with a common illness. Getty Images
The excellent news is that the virus isn’t life threatening — but there isn’t a remedy. And before it works its approach out of your system, the agony it causes is sadly very common.
Davis started experiencing her symptoms in early 2012, proper after the actress adopted her daughter and acquired an Oscar nomination for “The Help.”
“I was working, working, working, running myself into the ground,” she said. “Then all of a sudden, I woke up with flu-like symptoms and an extraordinarily painful rash.”
“It started on my stomach and it wrapped around to my back. It went away and then it came back with three blisters on my upper back.”
She says that when her docs identified her with shingles, it was “the surprise of my life” — “I knew absolutely nothing about shingles.”
The illness is precipitated by the varicella-zoster virus, the same one that causes chickenpox. If you’ve had chickenpox, the virus stays in the physique for life and may reactivate down the highway as shingles.
After a shingles diagnosis, Davis is now encouraging others to see the physician and care for their health. Best Image / BACKGRID
Shingles causes a painful rash that sometimes appears to be like like a single stripe of blisters that wraps around one facet of your physique. Doctors can normally inform at a look with a visible verify, but samples of the blisters can also be despatched in to confirm the virus is current.
The rash can be itchy, delicate to contact and cause a burning and tingling ache with fluid-filled blisters that burst and crust over. Some people, like Davis, also expertise symptoms like fever, headache, fatigue and sensitivity.
Severe issues can outcome from shingles, including postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). This persistent nerve ache — which can really feel burning, stabbing or aching — happens where the shingles rash appeared and lingers for months or years after the rash heals. Adults over age 50 are at elevated risk of this.
PHN can also cause injury imaginative and prescient if the rash seems close to the eye (ophthalmic shingles), or nerve injury if the rash impacts the nerve close to the ear (Ramsey Hunt Syndrome).
There’s no remedy for shingles, but docs can prescribe medicines that may velocity up therapeutic and decrease risk of issues.
Lessons realized
“I felt that I sort of was immune to any disease at that point because I worked out, I ate right. I felt that I was healthy because I did all the right things. And then all of a sudden, I have shingles,” Davis said.
Eating healthy and working out won’t stop shingles, although doing so is positively good for your health total. Still, we have a highly effective software to stop shingles from developing.
Adults 50 and older and adults with weakened immune systems should get the two-dose Shingrix vaccine, which is over 90% efficient in stopping shingles and lingering ache (PHN).
Getting shingles “woke me up to listening to my body, which I didn’t before that time,” Davis said. “I felt like I was a soldier and the more that I could muster through, the stronger I was. I didn’t know that that’s not what strength is about. Strength is about sort of loving on your body and experiencing good health as you age.”
Now she’s encouraging others to worth their health and see a physician when something is awry.“Life is not supposed to be lived with anything that causes you debilitating pain,” she said. “I feel like I’m important enough and my body is important enough to listen to it and to honor it … I found that that is the key to aging beautifully.”
