sore hip, rash and swollen glands. What on earth?

[FixingStuff]

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask your opinion? I think I'm mainly looking for a hand hold tbh.

I hurt my right hip a few weeks ago carried an electric piano up the stairs. It was stupid and I shouldn't have done it, but I did. I've seen an osteopath four times and my hip still hurts. In the last few days it has been getting worse and now it is hard to sleep.

Bizarrely I now have red raised rash on my back right in the place where my hip hurts, on the sacral dimple. It hurts and makes it hard to sit or lie down.

Two of the glands in my groin have also swelled up and are sticking right out and they hurt too.

I just woke up at 2am and it all hurts and the rash has now started just above the knee of that same leg.

What on earth is that?

I'm normally good at this stuff but the pain is making it hard to think, and I'm at home all day with my teen son who has severe anxiety, and my head is a bit overwhelmed with that too, so I just can't work out what on earth is going on.

I wondered if someone could possibly say something reassuring, so I can stop fretting about it and go back to sleep?

My temperature is 36.9C, so perfectly normal. My general health is rubbish and I'm extremely prone to stress-related illness.

Thanks!

Sounds like might need to see the gp but for tonight you could try to improve comfort with either heat or ice or whatever you feel will help. Would a pillow under your knee help? If it is worrying that is keeping you awake as well focus your efforts on calming your mind. If you have headphones nearby try binaural beats on YouTube ir music apps

Thank you very much for the encouragement. I will get a hot water bottle I think. Your company is very helpful.

You should be looked at for shingles. The hip injury might just be a coincidence. Another possibility is Lyme, might you have been bitten by a tick?

If it is shingles, ask for anti virals and nerve pain meds (like gabapentin) and since you have to move fast to get antivirals, try and be seen tomorrow

Any chance you could have been bitten by a tick?

Lymes often causes one joint to play up, also, rashes and flu like symptoms.

Thanks, that's good to know.

I think it would be quite hard for me to have been bitten or caught anything because I live in a very boring city centre location. I also always wear an n95 mask whenever I talk to people outside the family because my immune system has gone very wonky post-covid and I literally catch a bug every single time I talk to people unmasked. My son talks to people at the door but he very rarely catches anything.

It's really odd tbh.

I have a hot water bottle now with a very lovely fluffy cover on it. It is on my hip and it does help a lot actually. The chat helps so much too. Thank you for commenting.

With my more sensible head on, I wonder if the rash and groin glands are related and maybe there is some minor infection that is then causing the hip pain to be worse. But perhaps the hip is not the source of the problem? That would be handy, because that way it's like to just be a virus that will pass in time. Though how I caught it, I don't know.

I did rescue a pigeon from our garden last week, which had avian pox, but I wore an n99 mask and rubber gloves and didn't touch the pigeon. I just shoved into the box using the lid of the box.

The vet says people can't get avian pox. thought I bet I could if I tried

Shingles is a reactivation of the chicken pox virus..it hides in you after you recover from it as a child and then comes back as shingles when you immune system is stressed..which it sounds like it might be at the moment. Can you take a photo of your rash and post it?

Thanks, this is the rash here. It's about 10 cm across.

Looked like mosquito bites at first but now all spread out. It was never itchy, but hurts.

That's it after about two days.

That does look a bit like the start of it. Can you get to a doctor tomorrow?

Thanks :-)

Yes I can ring my GP first thing. What would then do? I never get on with any drugs, so there would be little point giving me any. It would be a relief to know it was shingles tbh, and not some lurky ghastliness in my hip. I don't mind just pushing through shingles if that's what's needed.

oh blimey. I just googled. I can't even take paracetamol, or put moisturiser on my skin as it causes total digestive chaos for months. Might be interesting.

In the plus side, it would renew my chickenpox immunity.

Thank you very much for your help. I will try to go back to sleep now. n'night. :-)

That looks more like alergic dermatitis or excema imo.

I get similar in cold weather when I crank on the central heating.

Looks like shingles. Worth getting antivirals from GP as they reduce the chances of post herpetic neuralgia which is long term nerve pain associated with shingles. Shingles can make you feel super rubbish and run down too.

Pharmacists can give anti virals, if it’s shingles :)

www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/pharmacies/how-pharmacies-can-help/?wt.mc_id=pharmacyfirst_Symptoms_shingles_Phrase&wt.tsrc=ppc&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAC67AbU3nZyWRttEFyWoHDAc9Tp7N&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi9yOkI3viQMVepJQBh1gaRL3EAAYASAAEgJ5g_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I'd say it looks and sounds like shingles to me also. Definitely call GP first thing

The GP receptionist will direct you to the the pharmacist for shingles.

Thank you very much for that. I think my GP would the person to talk to because I'm allergic to literally everything post-covid. I mean, antihistamins, antibiotics, the air outside if I don't wear a hepa nose filter. Literally everything makes my throat swell up. So I wouldn't take antivirals unless it was absolutely necessary. I will ring my GP and ask.

Thanks so much for thinking about. I feel a lot better now for just having a bit of certainty.

Not asleep, but that's okay.

Thanks :-)

Thank you very much again for your help. I asked the bupa doctor over video link and she says I probably have shingles, but best not to take the acyclovir as I would probably be allergic to it. So I've just to grind through it old-skool.

Thanks so much for your advice. That really helped.

Watch out for passing urine. The area where you describe your shingles is around the nerves that control the bladder. Any difficulty seek medical attention. I saw a patient as a junior doctor in 1986(!) who developed urinary retention with shingles in the same area. It resolved gradually but just a warning

Please, go to your GP, especially if you are over 50. If you do not treat shingles within a few days of the rash appearing, you are at risk of nerve damage and subsequent long-term nerve pain.

Thank you very much for all the helpful advice. It's been a couple of days now and it is very definitely shingles. The rash is very distinctive.

At the moment I just feel like I've had a bike accident and the flu at the same time. I have all these grazes down my right leg, as though I had fallen off my bike and got the grazes on the road (I live in a cycling city and have had this happen as an adult). Of course they are not really grazes and now they have little blisters on them as expected.

My leg has a dull pain that is quite intense and feels as though it is right in the middle of my femu, but it seems to go away if I lie with my leg completely straight. I am going to try sleeping like that tonight to see if it is easier to stay asleep.

It's a very different sort of thing, this. I haven't experienced anything like it before because I had chickenpox when I was 3 and my son was vaccinated, so I didn't see him have it at all.

Mostly the main thing is that I am very tired as it is hard to sleep with the pain.

I didn't take the acyclovir because, post-covid, I am allergic to a lot of things. My throat, neck and face swell up if I take antihistamines, or antibiotics, or if I go out in the pollen, without wearing a hepa filter in my nose. I really don't like it when that happens so I try not to take drugs.

I am staying in bed and resting really carefully and I hope that that is a good thing.

This is what that same rash looks like a few days later, in case anyone is coming along behind me and would like to know.

Have they tested you for MCAS (if your allergies appeared post covid)