Spider bite*Cellulitis*Shingles

I am slowly getting there. Very slowly. Still struggling with fatigue all the time. My shingles are still in the 'active' stage nearly 5 weeks after they erupted (along with cellulitis, as a result of a spider bite on my forehead). I didn't intend to harp on about it here, but I've been very surprised to find that this trifecta of mine is not an isolated occurrence. In checking my site stats I've seen several occasions when my blog was visited by people searching a combination of these ailments! So I thought I'd post just a little about what I'm doing about it and how I'm going.

The week before the bite I was feeling very well, culminating on the actual day of the bite with feeling positively great! I'd been eating well, exercising, I was happy and looking forward to the future. My research tells me that a spider bite will only cause consequential cellulitis and/or shingles if your immune system is already low. I don't have a fabulously strong immune system, but it was at its peak at the time. Some alternative health practitioners I've spoken to have said that the bite itself is enough to affront our immunes; when you think about what spiders eat, they must be filthy and then there is the added burden of the injected toxins.
The cellulitis was fixed by a couple of days of IV antibiotics. The shingles has remained and been slow to progress. It has traveled from the site on my left forehead, up across the top of my head, down to the top of the back of my neck and now across to the right side of my head near my ear. I have been lucky that the early medical intervention involved anti-viral drugs which has meant I haven't had to suffer the awful neuralgia most shingles attacks bring.

But its been weeks of extreme fatigue, headaches, itchiness and hot and cold flushes. I am having Kinesiology treatments and have taken homeopathic remedies, but right now I've settled into a routine of taking mix of 5mls of an astragalus herbal tonic and 5mls of olive leaf extract with a little juice and following that with a liquid mineral supplement in a glass of water. I take this 1/2 hour before breakfast and lunch. With my breakfast I take 1000mg of vitamin C, a womens formula multi vitamin (chosen because it includes extra B vitamins), 5mg of folate and 'good bacteria' capsule. I'm contemplating adding a l-lysine supplement to the regime. At lunch and dinner I take additional 1000mg vitamin C's. I also take paracetamol with each meal because I find it makes me more comfortable. I'm eating lots of vegetables, eggs, cheese, beef, chicken, fish, legumes and yoghurt while avoiding nuts, seeds, dried fruit, wholegrain bread, chocolate, coconut, oats, brown rice and soy products because of the amino acids in each group of foods. And I'm drinking St Johns Wort tea and lemon balm tea because both are have good antiviral actions. Both also promote an anxiety free state of mind, which is helpful as stress is also a factor in shingles (Wisdom of Healing has an interesting article). And the last few days I think I'm finally beginning to see the benefits of all this with a slight improvement in most symptoms in spite of more spots still emerging.