Early symptoms may include sensations of burning, tingling, or itching. When the virus reaches the skin, pain, a rash, and blisters occur. Only one side of the body is affected. The rash and blisters may appear on the chest, back, face, inside the mouth, down an arm or leg, or anywhere in a localized area or band on one side of the body. A painful rash or blisters on both sides of the body is not shingles.
Shingles can occur in the eye.
Any pain in the eye requires prompt medical evaluation to prevent eye infection or blindness. Shingles usually clears up in a month. There may be severe pain that improves when the rash heals, or continues for months or years. Persistent, on-going pain occurs in half the people over age 60 who develop shingles. Destruction of the nerve sheath caused by shingles exposes the nerve, which continues to send painful messages from the skin to the brain.