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My story, my diagnosis: Tamara's story

Updated on October 16, 2024

In this video, Tamara shares her shingles story: The initial pain she feared was a cancer relapse, her diagnosis and three-week recovery, and why she suspects the stress of planning her daughter’s wedding triggered her shingles infection.

Medically reviewed in April 2020.

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Transcript

00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] It started with just a pain in my back.
00:06
Well, I actually went to my doctor thinking that I was having a relapse from cancer that I had experienced five years earlier.
00:15
My doctor checked me out and determined that it was shingles even though I didn't have a breakout yet.
00:21
I'm a widowed mom and just married my daughter off to her man of her dreams.
00:28
So I was the mom and the dad for the wedding. I walked her down the aisle. And plus, I did all the mom stuff, which I loved doing.
00:36
But it was stressful. So we attributed my breaking out with the shingles
00:42
from the stress from the wedding. It's one of the most painful things I've ever been through.
00:48
It was three weeks before I was really back to normal. I don't even know that I knew that there was a vaccine for shingles.
00:55
But it's my understanding that there is a vaccine for shingles. And I would certainly have had that vaccine
01:02
if I'd had the opportunity. There seems to be so many people that are afflicted with it. And I would certainly not want for anybody
01:08
to ever have to go through it. It's horrible. And if you have an opportunity to take the vaccine, I would greatly suggest it.

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