If it was me I’d definitely want to get some treatment from the MT.
A lot of my family members have had shingles, both youngish and much older and for some a very unpleasant experience.
Get well soon…
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Wishing you a speedy recovery Pete…
Here are some homeopathic remedies that may help…xxx
Edited to add link to Helios’s remedy finder…x
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Happiness is having lots of Christmas Tree branches delivered by Christmas Elves disguised as cantoniers… 
(I had woken up this morning thinking… oh gosh… where am I going to get some greenery to decorate the church in preparation for the crêche… ) 
It’s a chemical trick that your brain has fallen for. It’s still good though.
Aha, but whose post are you answering David ? 
Peter,
Sorry to hear this.
A lot of French say the doctors can’t do much for shingles, but they swear by le magnetiseur for curing shingles. Try asking around in the French community as I’m sure they may know someone. It maybe a few € well spent or just a lot of codswallop.
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I went to one - a healer (guérit I think is the French term), did bugger all to help.
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It’s just a change in me
Something in my liberty
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According to my UK GP, shingles comes about usually a few months after a trauma … I got it six months after my mother died but as the '‘organiser’ of the family I’d been the one dealing with the practical things and propping everyone else up. The GP said that if people deal with their emotions then, in her experience, the shingles would disappear … the alternative is medicines and creams and time. So I went to an acupuncturist and asked her to treat the shingles, said what the doctor had said. She put in a few needles and suddenly I felt this enormous - absolutely huge - wave of grief come over me … even now I remember feeling like I was drowning in a sensation of abandonment and fear … and spent the next hour sobbing, wailing, crying. Scary, as I felt I couldn’t stop. And I’m not a crier … I don’t ‘do’ crying. After an hour I felt absolutely emptied (and looked a mess!). Acupuncturist told me to come back in two days, which I did, same again. She then told me she was treating me for unexpressed grief, that which I had suppressed during those months. And she, too, said that shingles can successfully be treated by finding the nervous trauma that triggered it. Three weeks later I was back at the doctors, the virus and rash had subsided … the GP wasn’t surprised and was delighted I’d taken the ‘off-grid’ approach. So, Peter, just my story to see if this might help you. If you can stop shingles in its tracks with this approach then it’s worth looking back to see what the trigger might have been. Good luck. And good health. xx
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I got shingles at 25 when I spent Christmas with my little cousins who had chickenpox and as I had just spent 5 months in India for work I was a bit tired so the virus reactivated. There’s sometimes a very undramatic reason.
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Shingles is caused by chickenpox virus which lies dormant after the childhood infection. It (for some reason) persists in a part of the nervous system called the “dorsal root ganglia”.
The reasons for re-activation can be many but, yes, include stress and trauma.
Once active the virus travels down sensory nerves and will cause a typical blistering rash in the area of skin supplied by those nerves - this accounts for the classic distribution of the rash, often on one side of the body stopping abruptly in the mid-line confined to a single “dermatome”
Most of the time an attack will subside naturally but it is not always a benign condition. Sometimes quite severe bacterial infections can occur because of the portal of entry afforded by the blistering rash of the shingles itself. Sometimes the pain can persist for months or years afterwards - a condition called “Post Herpetic Neuralgia”, which can be very difficult to treat.
It can also occur in the nerve which covers the face (the trigeminal) and if it affects the ophthalmic division (the one supplying skin around the eye) then eyesight can be threatened.
Anti-virals can reduce the length and severity of the attack, especially if administered in the prodrome before the rash breaks out (not everyone gets the warning tingles though). In reducing the severity of the attack they also reduce the incidence of post herpetic neuralgia. There is also a vaccine for the elderly which is effective.
I’m not sure about the electronic nerve stimulus mentioned by Véronique - I can’t quite see it killing the virus but it might help the pain in a similar way to a TENS machine (but I need to find a moment to discover exactly what equipment is used and how).
You can’t “catch” shingles because it is a result of a previous chickenpox infection - but you can infect someone who has no chickenpox immunity (they will get chickenpox though, not shingles).
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Thanks very much for this moving and highly credible account of your own suffering, Sandy. It resonates very strongly with me and strengthens my determination to follow you advice, and my own intuitions.
I also want to let everyone who has commented on my shingles know how comforting it is to be so supported at a time of trouble. Although I make light of things at times (and very heavy weather of things at other times) I often feel very fragile and insecure, and all your varied companionship means so much at such times.
My very busy MT phoned me before she opened surgery telling me to go straight down to see her so I went, lightly clad to allow a swift inspection of the affected anatomy (don’t even stop to think) and got the standard antiviral stuff straight away. She really is a remarkable woman.
But the mind-body approach has always been a guiding principle for me, alongside the pallette of clinical science, and I shall certainly ask around about alternative resources, as well as meditating on my own inner ones, and on my own predicament, with refreshed eyes. 
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@Peter_Goble - I have to say that I was really impressed by your positive “spin” on this!
Get well soon.
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Thanks Mat! I think spin fits my temperament, or perhaps oscillate is more appropriate, because sometimes I spiral into deep-dyed gloom, at other soar up into cloud cuckoo land. C’est comme ça hein ? 
Mainstream treatment in Belgium where I was living when the shingles came out - my GP sent me off to the kiné, it is as I said standard treatment. Worked brilliantly in spite of my scepticism, no PHN, no scarring, very little pain after a couple of sessions.
OK, so it is straightforward TENS which is known to be useful for pain, including post herpetic neuralgia.
There’s even a study which suggests it might be as good as anti-virals for acute shingles. Interesting, not sure the research is the best quality, but interesting.
Behandeling van Gordelroos
There seems to be a difference between diadynamic current and ‘normal’ TENS but exactly what it is I haven’t a clue.
Een dienst van: Fysiotherapie Centrum Velp
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Omschrijving
Bij acute gordelroos wordt u dagelijks, gedurende 7 - 10 dagen behandeld met diadynamische stroom. Bij postherpetische neuralgie wordt u behandeld met TENS stroom. U krijgt dan voor bepaalde tijd een draagbaar TENS apparaatje in bruikleen mee, waarmee u thuis uzelf kunt behandelen.