Stolen from Facebook

I got shingles at 40 and it was terrible. They don't vaccinate people who are that "young" for shingles here. I was sick for weeks, it was brought on by stress from a surgery I had removing a tumor (luckily lab test confirmed not cancer). I was recovering from the surgery and the shingles hit my face. I had immense pain and high fever for weeks. The doctors did what they could, but set me down for the talk. I was most likely going to lose at least one eye and might lose both, I should prepare to go blind and be disabled for the rest of my life.

Turns out in my misfortune I was actually lucky, I didn't end up losing an eye. My vision in one eye did degrade a little bit, but it was at above 130% of perfect before (probably even better, but they don't bother testing beyond that). The right eye had issues for a bit, but in the end returned back to perfect vision. In my experience worse than it was, but still very good.

So imagine me laying in bed, super high fever, worst pain I've felt in my life and all the while waiting for the lab results to figure out if the tumor they removed was actually cancer. I might go blind and I might have cancer. Worst few weeks of my life right there.

Afterwards I was a lot better, but still had terrible nerve pains. It started as a tingle where I had scarring from the shingles blisters, then intensify into full pain. Over the years it has gotten better, sometimes it gets irritated or hurts a bit, but mostly it's fine. I wouldn't wish shingles on my worst enemy, that shit is hell.