Cynthia Koh
Singapore celebrity Cynthia Koh tells the story of her mother's bout with shingles
My mum had her episode of shingles back in March 2014. She woke up and said, “I’m having these painful spells, everything is spinning.” I had to actually whisk her off to the hospital straight away. That was the beginning of this terrible one-year long ordeal for her.
We did several scans, and we found that she had Ramsay Hunt*. It's one of the shingles strands that affect the nerves on your face. It could possibly paralyze your face, and affect your speech and hearing1. It's quite terrible. The blisters and rashes were all inside her ears, totally hidden.
“THE ONLY THING I COULD DO AS A CAREGIVER WAS TO TRY TO CHEER HER UP…”
I can't really describe the experience myself. But I saw she was struggling even to get out of bed, even to eat, because of vertigo and headaches. I asked her to describe the pain of the shingles symptoms, and she said she was burning.
The only thing I could give as a caregiver was to try to cheer her up and make sure that she did her physiotherapy. But when you looked at her, she looked like a stroke patient, and that was very depressing for her. Her face took one full year to look better. When I say look better, she still has a little bit of the droopy face sometimes, but her speech has gotten better.
But right now, if you talk to her through the left ear, she can’t really hear you very well. That is permanent and something we cannot reverse. There’s only so much we can do, and we just hope that was more that we could do to prevent it from happening.
Looking at my mum, I feel that it was a very painful situation, especially when she is 65 years old and the road to recovery is so slow for her. I hope that this would not happen to your parents. It was a reminder for all of us that we shouldn’t take our health for granted. We should consider shingles prevention especially when we’re caring for our loved ones.
Is your parent over 50 and living with a chronic condition? They could be at a higher risk of shingles. Assess their risk
All statements are based on patient’s testimony.
1Harpaz R et al. MMWR Recomm Rep 2008; 57:1‒30
*Cynthia's mom was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome which is an uncommon complication of shingles.
