Could shingles be the new ME?

In Italy, they call it St Anthony's fire, an appropriate name for a disease that has bedevilled saints and sinners throughout the ages," said the doctor.

"You need to watch out, though, in case the rash meets in the middle - the old wives say that if that happens, you're done for."

I think he was trying to cheer me up but I didn't laugh, because I didn't think it was very funny. Being told that you have shingles isn't - especially when you're only 35.

"But it can't be shingles," I said, feeling slightly embarrassed by his diagnosis. As illnesses go, it's not the most glamorous sounding. "My husband says only old people get that."

"Nonsense," the doctor said. "I had it when I was at school."

It had started with a dull pain in my lower back, which I had put down to carrying around a baby that refuses to walk. Then there was a patch of blisters around my left kidney and the sharp, stabbing pain. Again, I just thought I'd overdone it on the sauce (which was true) and that the spots were probably midgey bites because I had slept with the window open to avoid getting a hangover.

But a couple of days later, the pain had worsened, the rash had spread and I was getting worried. Simple tasks such as bending down to get the washing out of the machine felt like Jonny Wilkinson had kicked a rugby ball straight through the posts of my pelvic girdle and those bites were beginning to get really itchy.

"I'm afraid you've left it too late for me to give you any effective treatment," said the doctor, having diagnosed shingles (or herpes zoster, as it is otherwise known) as soon as I raised my shirt. "The only drug I could have prescribed to you is Acyclovir (Zovirax, to you and me) but you have to start taking that as soon as the rash appears. Though it may shorten the illness marginally, there is no guarantee that it helps guard against post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN)."

"Post what? " I asked. "That's the name for the pain, which in some people continues long after the rash has gone away. There really is nothing that can be done about it," he said, an unpleasantly serious tone creeping into his voice.

Great. A shabby-sounding illness for which there is apparently no cure and which could dog me for life. I was beginning to feel desperate.

"I'm just giving you the worst-case scenario," he said. "But you are young and should be able to fight it off fairly quickly. Only 20 per cent of shingles sufferers get PHN and the likelihood is that they are much older than you."

"Am I contagious and what about my holiday next week? Can I still go?" I asked, pathetically.

"Not if you are flying and he gets chickenpox," he replied, pointing at my small son. That was it, I burst into tears and left.

To explain to you what my blunt, wise-cracking NHS quack never got around to explaining to me, shingles is a localised infection which stems from the varicella zoster virus - the same virus that causes chickenpox.

You can only contract shingles if you have already had chickenpox, since it is basically a reactivation of the dormant varicella virus which lingers in your nerve roots for life. Contact with an infected person does not cause others with the dormant virus to fall ill too, but it can cause chickenpox in someone who has not had it before (the patient is contagious for a week after the appearance of the rash).

Quite why the virus decides to reactivate itself is a medical mystery. It is primarily a disease of older people because it generally affects people when their immune systems are low. Cancer patients and HIV sufferers are also susceptible to it, as is anybody who regularly takes steroids. As for young(ish) people like myself, I'm afraid the medical books were no help on this matter but, happily, my friends were.

The extraordinary thing was that, as I sat there feeling sorry for myself, the more people I spoke to, the more came out of the woodwork to admit that they too had had the illness. First, there was my friend Tim - a big, robust sort of chap who has never been near a doctor for as long as I've known him - who told me that he'd had it at school and been sent home for three weeks.

Then there was Emma round the corner, who said she'd contracted shingles when her baby was about the same age as mine is now and she thought it was probably due to lack of sleep. Then there was Richard, a doctor friend who said his daughter got it when she was just nine months old (having had chickenpox at six months). Hurrah - if babies can get it, then I am not such an old bag as I feared.

With this happy thought in mind, I set about curing myself. For the next two weeks, my husband rubbed calamine lotion into the affected area (the rash, which grew to be about the radius of a whisky tumbler, became angry and red but, three weeks later, has begun to fade). The pain lasted for about 10 days, during which time I took any advice people gave me, which ranged from Chinese medicine to homeopathy to tips from the Vitamin Bible.

Basically, I ate a lot of liquorice (said to arrest the virus), I took St John's wort and echinacea twice a day, I drank leek juice (only twice, because my husband said it was like sleeping with an onion, so I moved on to rose-hip tea instead). I also took vitamins B, C and E, I gave up drinking for a couple of days and I stuck two fingers up at my doctor and went on a jolly good holiday for a week.

Almost month on and I am still tired, and I cry during Holby City, so I am still emotionally wonky. The itching, however, has gone, I've started sharing bath water with my baby again and, best of all, the other night I got my husband so worried about me that he came to bed before the Test Match highlights. Could shingles be the new ME - and a not-so-gentle reminder that thirtysomethings, particularly mothers of young children, should slow down?