What Can You Do to Help Your Senior to Manage a Shingles Outbreak?

If your elderly family member had chickenpox as a child, she may not realize that she’s susceptible to a shingles outbreak now. Shingles is a painful, blistered rash that can pop up seemingly out of nowhere and with no warning. Once your elderly family member experiences one shingles outbreak, she’ll definitely recognize it again afterward. Here are some ways you can help her to get through this experience.

What Is Shingles?

Shingles is a type of herpes virus, which is related to chickenpox. The virus lies in wait, sometimes for years, before erupting into a painful rash that can spread all over your senior’s torso. She may also experience symptoms like fever, headache, fatigue, and nerve pain. When the rash is in full force, she may experience a lot of itching which can be uncomfortable.

How Long Does a Shingles Outbreak Last?

Every shingles outbreak is slightly different, so there’s no one answer for how long your elderly family member will have to deal with the virus when it’s active. Most people experience symptoms for anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month or slightly longer. Managing the symptoms is usually much easier than trying to make the virus go back into remission.

Follow Her Doctor’s Care Plan

Your elderly family member’s doctor may be able to help her to deal with her shingles outbreak in a few different ways. Some people find that taking antiviral medications helps to reduce the severity of the symptoms they’re experiencing. Even if that isn’t effective, there may be other recommendations that help, like using lidocaine spray or using cool compresses. Whatever care plan her doctor recommends, it’s important that your senior follows it as closely as she can. Elder care providers can be a huge help with this, especially in reminding your senior what she needs to do.

Try to Help Your Senior to Be as Comfortable as Possible

The best thing that you can do is to help your aging family member to be as comfortable as possible while she’s dealing with shingles. Keeping track of what’s helping and what isn’t is great information that you can continue to share with your senior’s doctor, too. Home care providers can help you to keep track of that information and they can also ensure that your elderly family member is eating healthy meals and getting as much rest as possible.

Make Her Environment as Stress-free as Possible

Stress can make shingles much worse because it adds strain to her body. Anything that you can do to reduce stress levels for your senior can help her to weather her time with shingles. This is another area where elder care providers can help, because they can take over tasks that are too difficult for your senior to manage right now.

After your senior recovers from her shingles outbreak this time around, she may want to talk with her doctor about getting the shingles vaccine. This can help her to avoid further outbreaks down the line.

If you are considering elder care in Manhattan, NY, for an aging loved one, please contact the caring staff at Touching Hearts At Home of NYC today at 212-201-6139.