When Ashley McAtee, 37, was pregnant with her first child in 2019, she developed a painful rash on her torso at the end of her second trimester. The possibility that it was shingles never crossed her mind. After all, she’d always heard it was an illness that mainly impacted older people—and there were so many other ways she could have irritated her skin. The surprising diagnosis taught the entrepreneur and Bravo Summer House alum some important lessons about listening to her body and slowing down. Here’s her story, as told to health writer Amy Marturana Winderl.
When I was about 27 weeks pregnant with my first baby, my husband and I went on a babymoon to Hawaii. My company, Uptown Cheapskate Carlsbad, was still in its early days. Building a business was really stressful and came with a lot of growing pains. I hadn’t been able to take off as often as I would have liked, but I was like, Okay, I’m pregnant; I need to go on vacation. I’m only fully relaxed when I take a trip, and I needed to unwind. So we went to Maui.
The second day we were there, I woke up with a small rash on my belly. At first it wasn’t all that painful; it was mostly just uncomfortable and felt kind of weird—I’m not sure how else to describe it. Honestly, initially I was like, Do we have bed bugs? That seemed unlikely because we were at a very nice hotel, but I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Shingles didn’t ever cross my mind. I remember thinking that so many random things could have triggered a reaction: the new climate, the long flight, the pool. So I ignored it and went about my day.
The following morning the rash was bigger, and I told my husband it was scaring me a bit. I ended up calling my ob-gyn’s office and explaining what was happening. The nurse I spoke with said it sounded like I might have a heat rash, which made sense given where I was. At first the conversation soothed me, but the rash kept getting bigger, and the pain worsened. I called my doctor’s office back the next day and was like, “Something’s not right.” I had heard of pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy (PUPPP), a hive-like rash that some people get when they’re expecting and thought maybe that was what I had. Since heat rash and PUPPP were the most likely culprits based on how I described my symptoms, the nurse suggested I try hydrocortisone cream to see if it would help. (Spoiler: It didn’t.) I convinced myself it wasn’t a big deal and just pushed past the discomfort.
However, over the next couple of days, the rash spread across my abdomen and back. I called my mom a few times; as a mother of six, she has seen it all, so she was also trying to help me figure out the problem. By day five or so, I started feeling horribly uncomfortable. The rash hurt so much I couldn’t sleep. I called my mom again in a bit of a panic, and that’s when she said, “Ashley, I think you have shingles.” And I was like, “What the heck? There’s no way! That doesn’t even make sense.” We were leaving the next day, so I decided to wait and see a doctor once we returned to California. Looking back I wish I’d listened to my gut and gone to urgent care in Hawaii so I could have gotten a diagnosis and started treatment sooner.
