\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>f you\u2019re in your 40s, I have a great trick for getting people to spontaneously tell you how young you are: develop shingles. Friends, acquaintances and medical professionals will rapidly inform you that the painful rash is an older person\u2019s disease and, \u201cYou\u2019re a bit young to get that, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n I say this because at the tender age of 43, I have come down with a horrible case of ocular shingles. When I first went to urgent care about a weird red spot on my nose, a swollen eye and a terrible headache, the nurse looked dubious when he told me it might be shingles. \u201cYou\u2019re a bit young,\u201d <\/em>he said. When I then went to the ER as instructed \u2013 shingles near the eye is a medical emergency that can blind you \u2013 the ophthalmologist said the same thing. According to conventional medical wisdom, shingles is a disease you get if you\u2019re elderly or immunocompromised.<\/p>\n But that wisdom is outdated. Shingles is becoming significantly more prevalent among immunocompetent people under 50 globally, particularly women. Funnily enough, just a few days before I got sick, I\u2019d read a piece in the Guardian about the worrying rise of shingles among millennial women. Nobody knows exactly why this is happening, but one of many theories is that we\u2019re all chronically stressed. It seems my shingles case means I am very much on trend. So is my wife: she got shingles two years ago, age 41, on her back. Which is bad but, as I keep informing her, not as bad as getting it ON YOUR EYELID. Not that it\u2019s a competition.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to stress you out, but there\u2019s a good chance that shingles could happen to you, if it hasn\u2019t already. If you\u2019ve had chickenpox or even the chickenpox vaccine, you can get it. The varicella-zoster virus which causes chickenpox lurks in your body until your immune system lets its guard down; then it unleashes itself upon your nervous system, causing a painful and itchy rash that blisters and, if you\u2019re unlucky, long-lasting nerve pain. The Danish word for the condition is helvedesild<\/em>, (\u201chell fire\u201d) and pretty much sums it up: I have never experienced pain like shingles. One minute I felt like someone was striking my head with an ice pick, the next my face was on fire. If you\u2019re eligible for the vaccine, you should get one immediately.<\/p>\n The funny thing about my hot shingles summer is that, just before the pox, I thought I\u2019d never been healthier. My diet was decent, I\u2019d cut down on alcohol, and I was at the gym all the time. Not to boast (OK, just a little boast), but I was getting pretty jacked. It\u2019s possible, however, that going hard in the gym might have played a part in the shingles: some have reported that intense exercise was a trigger for them. It may also have been Karma. Literally. My neighbour\u2019s cat Karma (a cute troublemaker), had been stressing me out by bleeding all over my patio thanks to a wound that kept opening. I was worried about Karma, but also about my furniture.<\/p>\n Thankfully, I started antivirals early enough to avoid vision issues and, two weeks after the rash started, I\u2019m almost feeling normal again. But, while all ended well, the experience left me depressed about US healthcare. The reason I went to a walk-in urgent care clinic first is because it\u2019s hard to get a same-day doctor appointment. Then, after leaving that clinic, I waited in the ER for five hours. (In Philadelphia, no less \u2013 home to some of the best medical institutions in the country.) One of my compatriots in the waiting room told me she\u2019d been there for 10 hours on her last visit. A key talking point against socialised medicine in the US is that it would result in long waits. But I\u2019m sure I would have seen a doctor sooner if this had happened in the UK.<\/p>\n More importantly, I wouldn\u2019t be stressing about medical bills like I am now. My bill was $2,496, just for an ER visit, where I was seen in a hallway because it was so crowded. Insurance paid $838 and now I\u2019m on the hook for $1,658. That\u2019s on top<\/em> of the $783 a month for health insurance my wife pays for our family of three. That\u2019s just her contribution: her employer pays the rest. And who knows what my follow-up ophthalmologist visits are going to cost. So while my eye is fine, I\u2019ve got a feeling this painful ordeal is going to cost me an arm and a leg.<\/p>\n Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019re in your 40s, I have a great trick for getting people to spontaneously tell you how young you are: develop shingles. Friends, acquaintances and medical professionals will rapidly inform you that the painful rash is an older person\u2019s disease and, \u201cYou\u2019re a bit young to get that, aren\u2019t you?\u201d I say this because<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[6621,1844,16856,9551,7916,2004,6622,12142,11066],"class_list":{"0":"post-51845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-arwa","9":"tag-case","10":"tag-developed","11":"tag-expensive","12":"tag-fit","13":"tag-happy","14":"tag-mahdawi","15":"tag-nasty","16":"tag-shingles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}