What it’s like dealing with shingles

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19 Apr, 2026 06:08 PM5 mins to read

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Older people are more likely to get shingles, but it affected Tracy Bull, her 9-year-old son and husband. Photo / Getty Images

One in three people who’ve had chickenpox are at risk of getting shingles that causes a painful blistering rash and can come with an array of serious complications, including blindness and chronic nerve pain. Older people are more likely to get shingles, but it can affect young people
out of the blue, as it did for Tracy Bull and her family. She tells Paulette Crowley what’s it like to deal with the viral infection.

The first time I came across shingles was when my son was about 9 years old. He had a tiny spot on his leg which he was really complaining about. I thought, “This is so weird; what is wrong with this kid?” It’s really hard to see your child in pain. It was hurting him so much he could hardly walk.

I took him to the doctor who told us he had shingles. I was so shocked – I thought that affected only older people. The shingles cleared up for my son but I was aware he could get it again. We were scared it might come back when he was stressed, or a bit rundown, even though that wasn’t the reason he first got it. It was just random.

Then in 2021, when I was 50, I got this tiny spot on my face. It looked like a pimple and heck, it really hurt. I thought it must have been a really bad pimple for it to be so painful. I’m a beauty technician and work with a lady who is a GP and cosmetic doctor. I walked into work talking about how much my face hurt from this pimple. She took a look at it and thought it might be shingles.

She was worried the spot was on a nerve line that tracked towards my eye. She told me I needed to see my doctor straight away because if it reached my eye, I could lose my sight. I had no idea that was possible.

I saw my doctor who diagnosed me with shingles and gave me tablets and some cream with capsaicin in it, which is supposed to help treat nerve pain. They do say not to put it in your eye, and so what did I do? It got in my eye when I had a shower after putting it on. I hit the roof with the pain and it took a couple of hours to settle down. It was like having chilli in my eye.

Both eyes were swollen, puffy and weepy, which I thought were shingles symptoms. Instead, it turned out to be conjunctivitis, just to make things incredibly complicated. After that had cleared up with some drops, my doctor sent me to hospital to test my eyes and make sure my sight was okay. It turned out to be fine but it was really scary. You don’t know how far the shingle will track or where it will stop.

The skin on my face was really inflamed and very painful. The prescribed tablets and cream they gave me didn’t help much at all. I ended up using natural remedies that helped calm my face down. Within about a week, the small dot had become quite a substantial line that had reached my forehead. I looked like a hot mess. And my eyes were so sore, I didn’t want to open them.

I didn’t go to work for a couple of weeks Tracy Bull was off work for a fortnight, partly because she was in so much pain. Photo / Supplied

I didn’t go to work for a couple of weeks because, besides looking terrible, I was in so much pain. But overall, I was lucky because my shingles lasted only about a month, which is a lot less time than it is for many people.

Getting shingles can happen if you have chicken pox, which I did as a kid. My doctor told me I could have got shingles by being rundown. I’m pretty healthy – I don’t drink much and don’t smoke, and I eat all the right things. And even though I was pretty busy at the time, I was no more stressed than normal.

After having shingles I knew it could come back, so I was very keen to get a vaccination to prevent that happening. I had to wait a year after my symptoms resolved before I could get it. It was expensive – over $600 but it was worth it. It’s not funded until you’re 65 but there was no way I was waiting that long. I never wanted to go through having shingles again. If I could have backed up the truck a bit, I would have also made sure all my children had the chicken pox vaccine to lower the chance of them getting shingles.

But that wasn’t the end of my family’s experience with shingles. About a year ago, my husband got it! It started with a spot on the top of his head that really, really hurt. I said, “I reckon it’s shingles; go and get it checked out.” I’m so hypervigilant about that stuff now. It turned out I was right – he did have shingles. He was lucky it didn’t travel down to his eye and he recovered really well. He’s tougher than me.

I look back now and realise I was fortunate to have got shingles when I was 50. It can get harder to deal with when you’re older and it can get really, really nasty. I was one of the lucky ones.

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