 we are taking your help back with me, Wendy Lowell. We are coming to you live from our studios of ThinkTek Hawaii in downtown Honolulu and my home office in Makiki. Today, I'd like to share with you exactly what the show is about, taking your help back. Right now, as I speak, I'm managing a bout of shingles. I'm in excruciating pain. See the smile. But I know that the show must go on. Today marks week two of my shingles episode. So before we get started, I want to just share a little history about myself with you. So in this little shot, that's me. And that's me at about age two. And what a cutie I was. And look how skinny I was. So I was born with a congenital defect in my heart. And I wasn't doing too well at that age of two going two and a half. And so they actually wanted to wait till the children were at least five years old before they would send us to San Francisco Military Hospital to do any kind of heart procedures. Because in Hawaii, we didn't have pediatric cardiology. But about two and a half to three years old, I was going downhill pretty quick. I had walking pneumonia. I had shingles. My body was very compromised. And they didn't know what to do with me, except pray. The blessing for me is that the American Heart Association formed a program and they brought in a pediatric cardiologist to perform all procedures on the K keys here in Hawaii. I was one of three of them. So today, I stand 64 years old, heart strong, and willing to volunteer and do anything I can for the American Heart Association, because they pretty much saved my life at a very young tender age. So again, I had shingles. I had chicken pox. I had measles. I had the whole gamut of those kid diseases. And that's where I'm going to leave that right now. Oh, I also want to say the perks of having the, to be one of the first three Kiki in the state of Hawaii to have open heart surgery is that I made it to KGMV in 1965. I was on the front cover of the newspaper. And I had a great childhood after they fixed my heart. So I have a lot, a lot to be grateful for. And I am very grateful for all of that. So now we jump forward to 2022. I would like to introduce you to a good friend. His name is Alan. We'll call him Alan and their friend. He's a kind, gentle person. He's just a man to himself. He walks and does his exercises daily and he does everything when wherever he can. And just using that time to be in meditation and in deep thought, because he's a Bruce Lee fan, but he would walk every day. And one day he came home and his head was sweating like crazy. And he felt like little bumps on his head. And he asked his wife, Hey, honey, what is that on my head? And so she looked at it and she thought, Oh, you get rash. You got to take off your hat and walk without your hat. You got the head free. And so the bumps stayed and persisted. And of course, Alan kept walking and the bumps became a little bit more agitated, I would say. And so they called me and they asked me, Wendy, look at this, these bumps on Alan's head. What do you think they are? And I didn't know what they were because it's on his head. And I just simply said it must be some sort of rash. And so maybe if it gets bad, maybe you better go see take Alan to the doctor so they can take a look at it. So Alan, he just walks every day, even with the bombs or whatever is on his head. And he just does what he has to do because he knows he has to take care of his heart. So he was being a good patient. But when he went to see the doctor after a little while, the doctor did not diagnose him as shingles. I said what? And I said, I've never seen shingles like that before, especially not on the head. And so this is a good thing that I was exposed to all of this because I was very unaware that shingles could take forms in like this. And so it was just an amazing thing for me to be experiencing with Alan. He went through the whole gamut. You can see when we look at his head, you can see the postulates on his head. And that's how I kind of know that those would be shingles versus just a rash because of those little postulates. And the liquid in the postulates is what becomes contagious. And so Alan, you know, he went through the whole process and everything and he managed it. He got some medication for it, for some of the pain or just the itchiness, I would say. So on this slide, this is showing Alan, he's on the men. His blisters are crusting over, which is a good sign because it's drying up. And Alan has a sweet smile on his face then. But up to this point, all he was experiencing was the bumps on his head. And they look pretty radical. If you ask me, they look actually fierce. But the good thing is Alan wasn't experiencing much pain except a lot of itchiness, all right? And being the good patient he was, he didn't really scratch, but it did travel from his head to his face and his eye, his eyebrow and his eye. Maybe the liquid did ooze about and it just spread a little bit. But a good thing about this for Alan, he didn't experience a lot of pain. It wasn't until about two weeks after that the pain cleared up. And Alan thought the worst was over when the blisters started crusting. And so he was happy. But then the pain started and the pain never went away. And so even though you can see in this next slide the scars are dark and healing is happening, but the pain is more intense than the days before. So let's just say the blisters appeared in October 2022. Until today, August 2023, right on his eyebrow area, Alan's still experiencing pain. To the point where he went to see different doctors, he went to a Chinese doctor who gave him some great homeopathic medication and it's helping him manage his pain. So see, I want to say shingles will take all different forms. It just depends who you are, where your immune system is at, and just a lot of different things. I'm not a doctor. I'm just a good friend, a caring mom, and I just want to understand and learn how is this body, you know, what does this body really mean? You know, and I have a book, it's called Your Body Speaks, Your Body Heals. So when you listen to your body and you hear it, you have to respond because it's telling you something. And for Alan, it came out in blisters, something was going on in his body. His body needed a release and detox these viral little postulates and let it out of his body. And then the pain came and we don't understand why such pain for the last 10 months that he's been experiencing. I mean, that's a long time and that's not good. But the good thing is that Alan is managing this because his good wife, I want to call her Dr. Maria. She is such a good wife that she takes him to his appointments and helps him to, encourages him to stay on his medication and just look towards the next day. And together they really manage and conquer this bout of shingles and not a good thing. So on the next slide, I have a, let me see, oh, there's one scar left, the complete healing. Yeah, everything is just amazing what Alan is going through. So Alan, the thing that the Chinese doctor did give him, it's called dermatol for shingles. It's a natural Chinese herb. He takes this instead of Tylenol to help him cope with the pain. And let me tell you, the pain is intense, intense. So on this next slide, I have a friend. This friend called me and told me, Hey, I got this rash on my forehead. And I'm like, Oh no, a rash on your forehead. And she too wears a bandana or a hat daily. So I asked her a few questions, just to keep me, I asked her a few questions that I asked her to keep in touch with me daily. And I wanted to see how this all develops. Every day she would send me a photo. And every day when I received the photo, I would stretch it out. And I would try and see what does it look like. And once I enlarged the photo, and I saw the postulate, I said, Hey, I think you have shingles. And she says, Really? I don't think so. And so the next day went on. And then she said, Wow, I took my hat off. And the wind blew on my area, the affected area. And it was hurting. I said, Oh my gosh, I said, I think it shingles, you better go to your PCP and get a diagnosis and see what they say. And so the next day she calls and she says, Hey, Dr. Low, I said, What? She says, Dr. Low, guess what I got? I'm like laughing. And she called me Dr. Low. And not a title I earned. I'm just a mother and a good friend. So she says, I got diagnosed with shingles. Okay, so you can see her shingles are much less severe and just the postulates. And then the next slide shows you when she was diagnosed, the shingles were already on a download of healing. So she unfortunately has with just those little, the little bit of rash that she encountered, the little bit of blisters, she got the worst scarring. But she didn't have pain. She didn't, or she didn't have the absolute pain, I should say. And she didn't have a whole forehead of rash, like my other friend, Ellen. And so, you know, as I said, it's going to come to you in many different forms or ways. But I just, I keep these pictures on my phone because I like to tell people, if they say, Hey, Auntie, look, I get this rash on my head. I look at it and I ask them, let me watch it. And then once I see the postulates, I'm going to just say, I think it could be. It's up to them to follow up with their PCP and really get the diagnosis and see what form or shape they're going to be experiencing. Because it is, yeah, I'm going to share with you, I know how horrendous and excruciating the pain is. But so this young lady, she now lives with, of course, the shingles virus within her, but she has a scar on her forehead and the greatest part about this young lady, she never scratched those blisters. And that helps a lot because when you scratch, you open up the liquid, it's car, it causes it to spread further. And then it becomes sort of out of control. And then that's the bad part is the liquid, when the liquid comes and touches other things, other places it spreads and it at that point could be contagious. So then I want to tell you a few weeks later, my cousin, and these are all isolated situations. Alan lives in Oahu. That young lady lives on the big island. And this other man, actually my cousin, he was visiting and he said, Wendy, I got this pimple on my forehead. I'm like, wow, let me see. So he sends me a picture of it. I look at it. And I'm like, oh, okay, maybe pimples. I'm not sure. And then when it became more, he had like about five, just like the first picture, he had a few bumps. And it wasn't so severe. He didn't have the excruciating pain. But when he told me, yeah, I just touched my forehead and it hurts. So then I thought, I think you got shingles. And one of the chances that these two, these three people in my world, in different locations, all experience the same kind of symptoms. And it just exposes itself in a different form or shape. So I want to ask, or want to let you know, is shingles contagious? Shingles is not contagious. You cannot get shingles from someone else, but you can catch chicken pots from someone with shingles if you have direct contact with the fluid from their shingles rash. Remember, I keep talking about the liquid from the rash. That's the part that could be contagious. The risk of spreading the virus is very low if the shingles rash is kept covered. So if you have it like those three that I just mentioned, they had it on their forehead. So they're exposed. Also, you shouldn't be in the sun because the sun aggravates the, you know, it becomes more itchy. And what happens when it's itchy, you start scratching more, right? So you want to stay out of the sun when you have this sort of rash to eliminate the itch, to lessen the desire to start scratching. So guess who has an incredible pain on her lower left rib? It was me. All right. So two weeks ago, Wednesday, I felt an intense pain on my lower left rib. And I thought, okay, I can deal with it. It feels like a sighting. But then I realized I know that when some of the symptoms for heart attack for men and women are different. And that's why women experience many heart attacks because they ignore the symptoms. So I knew that side pain was one of the symptoms of a heart attack. So I watched it. That wasn't Wednesday evening when I experienced that pain. So I went to bed early at 11 o'clock, which is relatively early for Wendy, but I did go to bed early. And what happened was as I went to bed, I slept and I recovered myself feeling good the next morning. So on Thursday morning, I felt great. I did my whole routine. Then I came home at six and I rested. I rested and I woke up after 15, 20 minutes and I still felt the pain and it was quite bad. So I called out and I said, I'm going to cancel my seven o'clock meeting. And I just watched and listened to my body. The pain was getting a little bit more intense. So I, for the second time in my life, went to the emergency room, the ER. And I told them about my pain and how intense it felt. It felt like someone kicked me in my rib. And it did also feel like it was inflamed and it was on fire. So even my clothes touching that area, it hurt. And I told the doctors in the ER that they ran all sorts of blood tests. They could not diagnose the shingles. But then they saw that my troponin levels in my body were a bit elevated. So they focused on my heart. Being that I am a heart patient, they really were concerned when your troponin levels are elevated. It indicates that there's a heart attack or some abnormality in the heart. So they really focused on it. That was about nine o'clock at night that I was admitted. They ran all the blood tests for me, ran everything on my heart. And then at 5 45 a.m. Friday morning, they admitted me because they said I need to run more extensive stress testing on my heart. And I kept telling them about the pain on my side. They said, do you need morphine? And they asked me, what is the pain level from one to 10? I said, it's about a seven. But I can deal with it. They wanted to give me morphine. I refused it. They wanted to give me Tylenol. I ended up taking 350 mgs of baby aspirin. And that helped because I don't take anything so that little bit helped me as much as I needed. So all day they poked and jabbed me. They ran heart tests. They did a test after another by 5 o'clock on Friday afternoon. They released me and they said, Wendy, your blood pressure right now is at 108 over 69. All my blood work was perfect. For my age, everything seemed normal. And I asked them, what is this pain on my left rib? And they couldn't tell me. I said, is it shingles? They said no. I said, is it the C word? They said no. And so I didn't know what to think further. So I went home. I went home. And then the pain became worse and worse and worse. And it feels, I can't even wear a bra, sorry. But if anything that just touched that area, the wind, even just laying down, it just hurt. So now I understand what poor Alan is going through. And he's been suffering with this for almost 10 months. So this is not a good thing, right? It's not a good thing. But I wanted to talk to you about it because the pain is real. I feel it right now. And I'm not moving around. So my jacket doesn't touch my body and rub it because it will hurt. But yes, I have intense pain. So about six days of this pain, I now, and I went, I went, I did everything. I didn't have blisters or anything. I went surfing. I did all my activities. But about on the sixth day, I saw a little bump pop up. And you know, I've been looking for bumps and bruises and anything on my, my side, because I knew something was going to happen. But after six days, the first bump popped up. And so in this one, I have like a stream of redness with three postulates. So now I can confirm to myself that I have shingles. And this, this is what I recognize shingles to be on your nerve. Like when I was a child, when I was two years old and three years old, I'd have shingles all the time because my body was compromised. I had a heart problem. My immune immune system was very compromised and shot because I was so tiny and just struggling for life. And I had walking ammonia, I had the shingles, but I remember it as a cakey. My whole right under my breastplate would be inflamed with black dots because of course, as a kid, living in Miley with the heat and the sun, it was so hot. I was scratching. They gave me Calamine lotion, but that didn't help. I would sit in oatmeal baths and just try to ease the pain. And I, they didn't have what they have now. Mom may have given me baby aspirin to help me out, but that's what I had. That's all I had. And so all these shingles now are popping up, but for me, I don't have even as bad as, as Alan. I just have two areas, one right below my breastplate with three little dots and one on my back with three or four more dots. And so I see the postulates there. I'm watching it. I'm putting some cream on it. I actually am using a hemp cream to take away and ease the pain. And it really helps me a lot. So I just wanted to share with all of you that shingles is real. And I got it in my system. So the chance of me getting it again are possible. It's possible. And so I have to just learn to receive it. So now what do I need to do? I'm eating as healthy as I can. I'm just trying to boost my immune system so that I can just address what I need to. My body is speaking to me. Wendy, your immune system is compromised. Your body is under a lot of stress. What are you going to do about it? Am I going to sit back and wait? No. But you know, for, you know, that's why I said shingles, me, I got shingles really. But because I have the shingles virus within my system and the chicken pox and all of that, you know, when my body became compromised, it, you know, and I don't know if I was exposed to somebody with the shingles virus. I don't know. Who knows? It's not a question for me to have an answer. The main concern for me is that I have my body speaking to me and I need to respond. So as I said, I'm eating more fruits and veg. I've been eating more meals that down to earth and I'm just trying to detox. I'm walking a lot more because I need that oxygen in my body because oxygen, high levels of oxygen in the body helps to keep the body fluid and on the right track because a lot of diseases don't do well in highly oxygenated environments. So I know a little bit from a standpoint of being a mother and a friend and advocate for just taking your health back. So here I am two weeks out. The pain levels have dropped. I would say from a seven. I'm probably now at a six. I'm dealing with it. And I can't tell you anything much more except be aware of your body. And the reason why I didn't want to take the morphine in the hospital, the reason why I didn't want to take the aspirin is because my body has pain. Your body is speaking to you. It's telling you Wendy, something is wrong with you. Figure it out. If I took the pain meds at that point, it would amass the pain. Then I wouldn't know how to explain to the doctors what I'm experiencing. So that's why my refusal for taking pain meds is simply because I needed to listen to my body. All right. And that's what we all need to listen to. When you have a fever, your body is fighting internally for you. Your body is fighting and telling you something is wrong. And that's why the doctors kept asking me, do you have a fever? Do you have a fever? No, I don't. But I have an immense pain in my left side. And I kept repeating it. And they kept wanting to take the pain away with morphine because that's what doctors do. They treat you and they make you comfortable. Sometimes they didn't address the problem. And in my case, they didn't even diagnose the problem. But I know. And so when I do call the doctors, I will tell them that I did have the blisters that came up. The pain is real. I still feel it. And I'm just going to learn to deal with it. So my role, my responsibility with this show today is to just make people aware of your body and how precious it is. All right. So I am going to cut my show short a little bit today because I need to go and take a rest. But I'm just so excited that I was able to sit here and share this experience. So I'm going to say, hey, Wendy, your show has come to the close for now. I pray that I gave you some simple insight from a friend and not a doctor, which I'm not, on how to listen to your body as it speaks to you. I am Wendy Lo and we will return in two weeks with another edition of Taking Your Health Back. Aloha and Mahalo for listening.