3.5 Years After Shingles

So, it’s been a while since I wrote about Shingles. If you don’t remember, I contracted Shingles 3.5 years ago the right side of my face and head. It was probably the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. And if you want to read about it, I’m listing all the shingles entries at the bottom of this entry.  To give you a quick run down of what happened, this was how I looked like:

As you can see, by now, most of the scars are gone. There are actually some shallow indentations on some areas that I can feel when I run my fingers on top of it, but probably invisible in photos.

But there are some invisible damages: By the 8th month, I realized that I have lost partial hearing on my right ear and also lost all sensations on the skin that had blisters. Even after the scar went away, those areas were still numb to the touch. Although you can’t see it from the outside, it felt pretty obvious for me… Like the right part of my bottom lip can’t feel anything. And when I washed my face, the left and right side of my face felt different. I kinda got used to it by now. The numbness is only skin deep so I can still feel anything below. It doesn’t impair me because I can still move the muscles on my face.

As I explained on the last entry of the Shingles post, the doctor said, if the hearing and the sensations didn’t come back after 6 months, I have probably lost it forever. It means the nerve-endings probably received too much damage and were unable to heal.

I guess I was ok with that, because there was nothing I could do about it. It didn’t bother me too much anyway.

What made me want to write about this again was that about 3 weeks ago, the area where the scabs used to appear started to act weird again. I started to feel tingling sensations, on and off, on my lips, chin and some areas of my cheek.

And then, about two weeks ago, my ability to feel on some of those areas seemed to return. If I touch my lip, I could slightly feel the touch… so, it was sorta less numb, if that makes sense… Kinda like when your cheek was coming back to life after having a local anaesthetic after your dentist appointment… or something like that.

Of course there are some areas that are still completely numb, like my bottom right chin, the area near my right eye, and some parts of my right ear. But my cheek and lip have started to feel something! It is still very faint, but… wow, I didn’t think I could feel anything ever again!

So, I’m very happy… It turned out that those nerve-endings are actually still healing. They didn’t just die and give up. Maybe it would take 3-4 years to completely heal. Maybe more. But this whole thing makes me so… hopeful!

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The Complete Shingles Saga:

• The Pain Called Shingles Part 1
• The Pain Called Shingles Part 2
• The Pain Called Shingles Part 3
• 3.5 Years After Shingles