About the aftermath of battling shingles

I experienced shingles six months ago. At first, I only thought shingles was a neurological disease. However, after listening to the doctor's explanation, I realized that it was more likely a skin condition.

So, after about two weeks of administering antiviral drugs, the symptoms subsided. I had thought that once you recover from contagious diseases like chickenpox or smallpox, you develop natural immunity and never get them again. However, I heard that the recurrence rate is about 5%, making it a kind of chronic disease. This led me to investigate various ways to strengthen the body's immune system.

One of the symptoms of shingles is skin blisters. While I can somewhat endure them, the pain that feels like stabbing the skin seems to test the limits of human endurance, causing a pain I never want to experience again. I think shingles is one of the diseases I never want to catch again. When I was young, my immune system was strong, so I didn't even come close to such illnesses, but now, due to weakened immunity, I can also get shingles. Time is cruel.

Shingles has a lower contagiousness compared to chickenpox, but since the virus can be isolated from blisters until 7 days after the onset of rash, it is possible for chickenpox to develop after direct contact with a shingles patient. Therefore, the possibility of transmission to family members must also be prevented, making it a troublesome infectious disease. In particular, to prevent transmission through contact within families, special patient management is required. Additionally, since it mainly affects elderly people and is accompanied by pain, caution is needed to prevent young grandchildren from contracting the disease.