Shingles Support Site

neck/jaw pain – shingles?

I started with a cold about a week ago, which then turned into sickness and diarrhoea. I woke up this morning with a really achey jaw and neck. My jaw is really stiff and I can barely open my mouth, and I can’t really move my neck. I can turn it, I just can’t move it from side to side. It hurts when I swallow too. The main point of pain is in my neck, near my gland on the right side.

Does anyone know what it could be? Someone has mentioned the start of shingles?

Thanks.

Does this sound like shingles?

I had shingles on my abdomen one month ago that are now mostly faded. Last week, I started having pain on one side of my face, jaw, ear, and teeth. Then I started to get the same strange numb sensation and pinpricks, especially in that ear. Feels like someone is stuffing cotton into my ear (really strange sensation, not just a plugged ear feeling). Today I woke up with about 10-15 dots on my face that look exactly like the shingles I just had, only not in a single patch, and a low-grade fever and just generally feeling run down and bad. And now I’ve seen flashing lights in that eye 4 times today. I went to the doctor. He said it’s not shingles because there are dots on both sides of my face (almost a straight line of them straight across my face) and said I have a sinus infection, a viral rash, and TMJ syndrome. It just doesn’t sit well with me. Even though the rash doesn’t look like much, it feels just like the shingles I just had a month ago! And it’s strange that I would get 3 separate things all at once. Plus I’ve had many, many sinus infections and this just doesn’t feel like that. Can shingles be atypical and be on both sides of the face??

Hey, answer this…..u know you want to, anyhow?

This is an excerpt to my story (one of my contacts requested more, and here it is – you know who you are). How do you like it? And again, before you boil me, I have excluded a mass amount of punctuation from it, so you have to tell where the characters talk.

The last time this happened, it had been a young girl who did it. She was no older than 17, and if Cole’s memory served him right, she was going to college to be a pediatrician. The walls in her bedroom had been jacketed in a fuchsia paint, still drying, her floor was clean and smelled of pine odor. Cole remembered her mother saying in the report that she found blood in her daughter’s underwear when she did the laundry a day prior to when she killed herself. The mother said her daughter had been out late the previous night, and came home crying. She didn’t say what was wrong when her mother asked. The mortician later concluded she had been raped, and that she was a virgin. Cole never felt so invested in contributing the succor to the mother, surety that although she would grieve, she would overcome it. He never told her there would be days she would do the laundry and step to the washer holding the basket and just stand there, staring into nothing, and thinking absently about her daughter. There would be days she would accidentally put aluminum foil in the microwave and she would cry intermittently until her face was dry. He knew this for he lost a child, and he didn’t intend to lose his own daughter.
That was the last time.
An hour ago, Miller called Cole while he had been in the shower and Cole missed the first call but the answering machine released Miller’s message that Elliot McNamara was reported to have committed suicide. Gunshot wound below the lower jaw shelf. The chief put Cole on the case.
Cole got out the shower and as he dried off he stared at the telephone and debated on dialing the precinct and relinquishing the case to another detective. He placed his hand on the headset, and picked it up and hung it back on the hook. He heard Courtney downstairs talking to someone on the phone. He smelled eggs and toast and coffee lingering in the room, blowing through the vents. He sifted through his wallet and found a little over forty dollars. He went to the bed and lifted the pillow and picked up his pistol and ejected the clip and popped out a single .45 cartridge and slipped it in his breast pocket. After he put the weapon in the shoulder holster he snapped it shut around the handle and jiggled it to be sure it was secure.
While he was in the car, he lowered the sun visor while the sunlight stumbled through the windshield through the soft rap of snowflakes being cut by the wipers. The road had been slippery and there had been an accident Cole would just miss coming off the beltway towards I-95.
The McNamara home was about twenty minutes away from Cole’s home on a good traffic day, but it took him the better part of an hour to get there even though he took an exit ramp and left the beltway before he drove too deep into the congested area.
When he was pulling off the ramp, Miller called his cell. Cole reached in his inside pocket and felt there, but no phone. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and patted his chest and landed his fingers on his phone through his coat on the breast pocket of his dress shirt. He turned down the radio news almost to a mute.

There was evidence of police activity maybe three blocks before the McNamara home. Squad cars resting in the rain, lights flashing through the gray. Oncoming sirens piercing the silence. He pulled in front of the house; the big and strapping family seat made out of brick and plastic and good shingles covering the roof. Yellow tape around the perimeter. Possibly fifteen squad cars parked out front. Residents standing out their windows or standing on their porches and talking on phones. Troopers stood outside the house looking up at the two broken windows on the second story like mountain climbers at the piedmont scoping their next venture. They wore dark blue raincoats. Men walked in and out the house with plastic baggies and paperwork and some with nothing at all. Some walked out with their hands covering their mouths and clamping their nostrils shut with their index and ring fingers. Cole parked the Crown Vic a house away and shuffled to the front door and stepped inside and generously wiped his feet on the floor mat. A man in the living room wearing a trench coat and a tan blazer underneath spotted Cole and walked over to him. His forehead was damp from the rain. Or maybe he was sweating.
Buncha guys been in and out, he said.
You have a time of death?
Figure it was sometime last night. Coroner will know more.
Where is he?
Upstairs. They hadn’t even cut him down yet. His f*cking face is blue.
Geez, nobody likes to read, huh?

Facial Rash due to dental abscess? (pics)?

I woke up yesterday morning with a swollen face due to an abscess that I have been putting off taking care of. Made an appointment with the dentist for this week. Woke up this morning with what appears to be a curling iron burn on my face, directly over the abscess and trailing diagonally across my face, passing over my lips and continuing onto my lower jaw on the opposite side. http://i608.photobucket.com/albums/tt167/KissesCatharsis/1006091228.jpg Could this be due to the dental abscess? I’ve looked into some other things and it also looks similar to shingles, but I’m not sure.
It looks a lot darker in person, to me.

Some other info that might be helpful:
I live in a college setting.
Haven’t had any new sex partners.
No known allergies.

Can someone help diagnose my aunt?

She is 80 years old. Has a rash on one side of her body. I am guessing that its Shingles. She is incredibly shakey. Guessing that its early form of Parkinsons. Complaining of intense stomach pain and has a high blood pressure during the pain then becomes very dehydrated and has a low blood pressure. Mabey Pancreatitis or Gallstone? And she is now having pain in her left arm that stops at her elbow but is tingling all the way down her arm. The pain also goes up to her jaw. Any ideas?
she is already at the doctors, they are trying to figure out what is wrong with her. and i am just asking around.
the rash is on her left side. and btw i am 15 so give me a fucking break.
*right side. sorry about that.