Shingles

Two days after my return from Devon, I had booked an appointment with my GP surgery to have a shingles vaccine. The medics have been pestering me for years to have it done and I kept refusing, partly because I was getting enough jabs as it was with Covid and flu to keep my arm looking like a pin cushion. But another reason to avoid it was that a relative of mine had had the shingles jab a few years ago and gone down with shingles some three weeks later. The doctors had told her it was a huge coincidence, but a coincidence I did not particularly want. However, the nagging doubt that shingles itself would be far worse without the immunity, I decided to go ahead with it last week.

Shock number one was the condition it left me in! For five days afterwards, my arm was so painful, red and swollen I could not bear to lie on it in bed. Additionally I felt so tired, as if someone had pulled my plug. The day immediately after the injection, I woke as usual in the morning, had breakfast and was so exhausted I went back to bed and slept for an hour. Then I had lunch and went back to bed for a further two-hour nap. After supper, I returned to bed for an early night. I googled side effects of the vaccination and those symptoms I was having (swollen, red arm pain and extreme fatigue) were within the bounds of normal, so I just had to put up with it. Five days later I was beginning to return to some semblance of normal. However, in one of my  gym classes this week, which are manic at the best of times, it was all I could do to keep up and was sweating buckets, so much so my hair was as wet as if I'd just had come out of the shower.

Shock number two was that it is no longer a single vaccination but now in two parts, six months apart. I have the same to come (if not worse, as someone has knowledgeably told me) in November. Boy, am I looking forward to that!!