Recently my practice has seen a large influx of shingles outbreaks. Shingles is a viral infection (varicella-zoster) that lays dormant in nerve tissue after someone has been exposed to chicken pox. It can be extremely painful for some, itchy for others, and even numb for others. It involves an outbreak of a rash that has fluid filled vesicles that eventually break and crust over. A shingles outbreak can technically occur anywhere, however, most often it is unilateral, meaning