What I thought was yet another stupid and avoidable injury has turned out to be more serious –and way more annoying.

I did pull a muscle in my lower back and groin, but there’s a new complication that’s really not fun.

Here’s how it all started and it involves stairs again…

Don’t ask me why, but I was running UP a flight of wooden stairs holding a box of trash in my hands. I was wearing flipflop type slippers which caught on one of the steps, causing me to fall forward in a very awkward and twisty position. I didn’t want to drop the box of trash so my left forearm took the brunt of the fall and it ended up cut, bloody, and bruised. The back pain started a bit later and like I usually do, I ignored it, but this time it got worse.

A few days later, my right thigh became numb to the touch, so along with the pain, this was a whole new weird symptom.

It turned out to be a groin pull accompanied by thigh numbness which might indicate nerve compression or a severe muscle tear in the hip region. It is often caused by irritation of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve (causing outer thigh numbness)

It’s called Meralgia Paresthetica.This condition involves a pinched nerve where it passes under the groin ligament. Meralgia paresthetica is also known as lateral femoral cutaneous nerve entrapment. Moralgia paristhetica is basically a pinched sensory nerve near your hip crease. Apparently it’s not dangerous but it can be extremely annoying.

But it gets worse…

In the middle of the night, it felt like my left leg was being bitten by some sort of insect or a thousand insects. I jumped up and immediately turned on the light to check the sheets and my PJs for any signs of a bug, but there was none. What I saw was a very very itchy rash and wheals all the way down the inside of my leg. I figured it was a case of spontaneous urticaria (hives) or contact dermatitis, but I hadn’t changed my laundry detergent and the rash was localized to only one leg, so at that point, I was puzzled.

That’s weird, I thought to myself. I took Claritin and when that didn’t work, I took some Benadryl to stop the itching, and that just made me sleepy.

I found some PT exercises to work on the pinched nerve issue (do you know where this is going?) and that did offer some relief.

However, the pain was so overwhelming at night that I gave in and took some children’s ibuprofen and while it did help, ultimately it turned out to be a huge mistake because I really don’t tolerate Nsaids well, not at all.

And now this morning when I woke up, the outside of my leg was itchy and tingly, and when I looked, there was a cluster of the same red rash and wheals.

That’s when it finally dawned on me that this was no ordinary spontaneous urticaria–it looked suspiciously like the beginning of herpes zoster — SHINGLES!!

I also feel generally crappy and tired, not my usual peppy self. The rashes haven’t yet progressed to the gross stage of blistering, but a couple of them look angry enough, so I’m expecting the next phase…

Physical trauma or injury—such as a fall — can trigger shingles. When localized physical trauma stimulates a specific nerve, it can cause the dormant chickenpox virus, resting in nerve roots, to reactivate. This leads to a shingles outbreak directly at the injury site. (From NIH)

OMG.

I never had chicken pox, but when I was ten years old, I had shingles on the back of my left leg. My doctor called me a medical miracle because children don’t normally get this viral disease, but all I remember is being virtually paralyzed and in excruciating pain. I couldn’t walk, I was carried from room to room and even the lightest touch of a sheet was enough to make this little princess scream in agony.

I guess I’ll call my doctor tomorrow and have her prescribe an antiviral along with keeping my hands away from my face so I don’t inadvertently infect my eyes or mouth.

In case you’re wondering, I didn’t ever get the shingles vaccine because I thought I’d never get it again, but I might rethink that decision after this is all over.

Sign me unhappy in SoCal…