zoster ophthalmicus et maxillaris

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note: this post was written in october of 2025. it's been sitting in my drafts and i'm only now releasing it

on thursday, the 9th of october, i visited my gp due to some pain and redness in my right eye. it started with an uncomfortable feeling at the beginning of the week and slowly escalated into a full-blown conjunctivitis, or pink-eye as it is colloquially referred to. the doc gave the diagnosis, prescribed some antibacterial eye drops and sent me on my way

throughout the remainder of the day, i did some googling due to a rash that had been sneaking into the right half of my face. i wondered whether that was a normal side effect of the conjunctivitis as i’d never had it before. the AI summary mentioned shingles, prompting me to compare my rash with the ones displayed on google images. my condition lacked the bubbly touches, so i felt somewhat relieved to know i didn’t have to deal with all that garbage

the next day i rang in the way i ring in most days: with a visit to the café. the barista, an acquaintance of mine, looked alarmed due to my eye not bearing much likeness to that of a typical human and told me that i seemed to suffer from conjunctivitis. pretty good medical analysis for an economics grad. after i sat down to have my drink and take a load off, i noticed that i was unable to calm my racing mind. it didn’t feel right that my doctor completely ignored the now extremely prominent and painful rash on my face. i kept going over the shingles summary. the prospect of vision loss didn’t sound particularly appealing and caused me great anxiety, so i called his office and thankfully got slotted in for 11:30am. it was a bit of a miracle since i had just missed the deadline for patients with acute issues and they were about to go on holiday at the end of the day. anyway, an hour later, i checked into the emergency room due to a severe case of the shingles potentially affecting my optical nerve. it was indeed conjunctivitis, just not in an isolated form caused by bacteria, but rather as a by-product of something a little more sinister

if you’ve ever had chickenpox, the varicella virus responsible for those is still residing in your body as we speak - a sleeper agent waiting to be reactivated to cause havoc once more but in a different form, namely by causing herpes zoster, the slightly more professional sounding medical designator for shingles. this reactivation usually happens in one’s later years due to a natural weakening of the immune system as you get older but can sometimes also occur in children and, as you now know, thirty year-olds just minding their own damn business. the main thesis on why the virus was able to reactivate despite my relatively young age was increased stress, which makes sense considering me being stressed the fuck out 24/7 due to my bitch ass job

i could now tell you about the long line at the ER reception, the fact that i spent an hour waiting at the wrong dermatology department (yes, there’s multiple. three to be exact) or the way i passed out when i had blood drawn (i strongly dislike sharp objects entering my flesh), spilling 75% of my 0.5l coke while drifting through a serene limbo state where the last image my eyes picked up while conscious slowly wobbled around and disintegrated, but i instead want to talk about the worst event of that friday: the dermatologist’s examination

after describing my symptoms, the doctor told me that they were intending to keep me for five to seven days. shingles that affect the head can lead to other nasty shit apart from “just” vision loss such as a generally uncomfortable inflammation of brain-protecting membrane, so it was essential to introduce aciclovir into my blood system as quickly as possible to cripple the virus’ reproduction rate. the fastest method would, of course, be intravenous in nature and require me to stay. no one likes hospital stays, but i especially loathe them. i got out of a 10-week one a year prior and was hoping to stay far away for the time being. i thought i’d just go through one or two examinations, take a bucket of meds and go back home whistling the nightcore version of roy bee’s “kiss me again”

it is now the second full day of my stay. sunday to be exact. and it’s 6:47 in the evening if you must know. i woke up to my right eye being swollen shut today. i can’t really remember much of what has happened over the last 48 hours, only that it feels a little bit like a strange but somewhat comfortable dream

every eight hours - at 7am, 3pm and 11pm - i am hooked up to a drip. it’s a glassful of salt solution containing 500 milligrams of the aforementioned aciclovir. it drains over the course of about two hours due to the gravity-based feeding mechanism reliably fucking up eventually. seriously, can we get something a little more dependable? five times a day, i have to dribble three kinds of eye drops into my right eye. one containing ganciclovir for combating herpes affecting the eye, one for alleviating the conjunctivitis, and another for lubrication. i’m particularly bad at administering the first one, a gel-like substance, since it keeps getting stuck in my absurdly long eyelashes due to me applying it at the wrong angle, so i ask the nurses to do it for me. so far they have obliged. i take pain medication four times a day, mainly to ramp up resistance to the type of nerve pain that typically comes with a developing zoster outbreak. i apply cream to the rash in my face twice a day to dry it out and therefore reduce transmissibility of the virus. every day for the last three days, i have had specialist appointments due to some white dots appearing on some precision imagery of my right eye. could be something, could be nothing. they’re not sure yet

whenever i’m not eating or on an appointment, which is most of the time, i put on a season of the angry video game nerd and doze or sleep. when i found myself alone in my new room on the dermatology station on friday evening, i had the intro to one of his christmas episodes stuck in my head for some reason and decided to revisit his content. the distant familiarity with about 90% of those videos probably help establish the sense of comfort i am feeling. despite the misfortune of having to stay here in this alien environment in the first place, i am having a reasonably great time. if you’re familiar with the simpsons meme of homer imagining lying on the couch smiling while actually lying on the couch smiling, that’s what i look like here in those hours of rest

i must say, if you ever want to visit a uniquely charming city that truly never sleeps, break a leg and go to a large hospital. it’s amazing how all of these departments work together to provide care to a fuck ton of patients each day around the clock. all these parts of a complex piece of machinery interlocking to keep an enormous ship moving in some direction or other. the nurses and doctors i have met here have been mostly great, going the extra mile even if you don’t need them to

fun fact for the road: did you know that a person who has not yet gone through a chickenpox episode will develop the disease after coming into contact with the shingles virus but not experience shingles at that time? so technically, you can not transmit shingles to the vast majority of the population, but you can give a small portion chickenpox. then they roll a six-sided die, and if they get either a one or a two, they’re unlucky enough that the then-dormant varicella virus will reactivate at some point in their lifetime and cause shingles. of course, they’d have to be super unlucky to get the ophtalmicus or maxillaris versions affecting the eye or the jaw respectively, both requiring an extended hospital vacation

it’s now saturday, a full week later. i was released from the hospital yesterday

listening to avgn episodes eventually got tiring, and lying around the entire time somewhat lost its attractiveness by tuesday. throughout the rest of the week, three friends paid me separate visits to bring over snacks and drinks i’d been lusting for and keep me company. i’m very grateful for them existing. it would have been a lot more dull without their willingness to acquire chickenpox and make eye contact with my at times horrifying condition

overall, i think i got pretty lucky. the bubbles on my rash died off quickly, eradicating any chance of transmission. it seems that the intravenous antiviral was very effective at keeping it all contained despite me not taking my symptoms seriously for many days after initial onset. i’m not quite safe yet, though. my retina has recovered but still needs regular check-ups since shingles affecting the head usually carry long-term health implications. i still have to apply antiviral eye gel, and sometimes, i suffer from short spikes in nerve pain in the right side of my head. but all in all, i'm A-OK. thanks, health system of the federal republic of germany

off-topic closer: i’m not an anime guy - it makes me cringe - but this out-of-context clip i genuinely love and therefore want to share

I’m a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence - Sylvia Plath