“Similarly, some people feel skin sensitivity or pain in just one area of the body, often on their torso, face, or back. It might feel like sunburn or nerve pain without any visible rash,” says Amanda Levine, MD, a board-certified dermatologist at NYU Langone Health. For instance, she adds, before a shingles rash manifests on a patient’s chest, some people think they’re having a heart attack because of the pain they feel in the area.
Headache, light sensitivity, and vision changes
Head pain or migraines can signal many different viral ailments, including shingles. “Sometimes shingles presents as a really terrible headache, and that’s actually what brings patients into the hospital,” Dr. Levine says. “Then, usually a day or so later, the rash appears near the face or the eyes.”
Others with shingles experience photophobia, or light sensitivity, when the infection affects the area around the eyes. At times patients will mistake this for a migraine or eye strain, Dr. Markus says.
Developing shingles near the eyes can also impact your vision or cause discomfort in the ocular area. “Patients can have eye symptoms, and that can be eye pain, blurred vision, redness of the eye, and swelling of the lid,” Dr. Levine says. “This is important to identify correctly because it can actually be an emergency, and the patient should be evaluated by an ophthalmologist immediately.”
Gill’s biggest concern about her shingles diagnosis was her eye health. “The thing I was most worried about was that [my doctor said if the rash] gets too close to your eye, you could go blind,” she says.
Mouth sores and toothaches
While she was sick, Gill developed painful sores on her tongue and lips called oral shingles, which she says made it hard to eat and talk for about a week. “I had to do all of my chewing on my left side because everything was on the right side,” she says.
She describes these lesions as similar to really bad cold sores. Before the lesions form, it’s possible to mistake the pain for a toothache and experience pain, burning, or tingling inside the mouth.
Fatigue
Unfortunately, not only can shingles leave you drained, but feeling fatigued and stressed can also make you more susceptible to illnesses and infections, including—you guessed it—shingles.
“If you’re feeling fatigued and stressed, your immune system might be dipping down,” Dr. Rossi says. Since shingles is always dormant in your body, it can reactivate when your immune system is compromised, whether from stress or another illness, Dr. Rossi says. “A lot of times when I’ve diagnosed shingles in people, they will say, ‘Oh, I feel really stressed,’ or, ‘I feel fatigued,’” he says. This was precisely the case for Gill: “I got shingles around the first Trump inauguration,” she says. “I literally was in bed from the stress of the new administration.”
Flulike symptoms
Dr. Markus says early shingles symptoms can sometimes mimic signs of the flu or common cold. “Fever, chills, fatigue, and body aches can develop in the early stages of shingles,” she says. As a result, many people may not even consider that they have shingles, given that these symptoms pop up regularly for other more common illnesses. Gill recalls having a moderate fever when she was sick, even though that’s not a typical symptom.
