If you’re 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’s disease and, “You’re a bit young to get that, aren’t you?”
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. “You’re a bit young,” he said. When I then went to the ER as instructed – shingles near the eye is a medical emergency that can blind you – the ophthalmologist said the same thing. According to conventional medical wisdom, shingles is a disease you get if you’re elderly or immunocompromised.
But that wisdom is outdated.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’d 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’re 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’s a competition.
I don’t want to stress you out, but there’s a good chance that shingles could happen to you, if it hasn’t already. If you’ve 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’re unlucky, long-lasting nerve pain. The Danish word for the condition is helvedesild, (“hell fire”) 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’re eligible for the vaccine, you should get one immediately.
The funny thing about my hot shingles summer is that, just before the pox, I thought I’d never been healthier. My diet was decent, I’d 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’s 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’s 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.
Thankfully, I started antivirals early enough to avoid vision issues and, two weeks after the rash started, I’m 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’s 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 – home to some of the best medical institutions in the country.) One of my compatriots in the waiting room told me she’d 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’m sure I would have seen a doctor sooner if this had happened in the UK.
More importantly, I wouldn’t 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’m on the hook for $1,658. That’s on top of the $783 a month for health insurance my wife pays for our family of three. That’s 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’ve got a feeling this painful ordeal is going to cost me an arm and a leg.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
