Ok, this is interesting...I was searching the web (I know, I know, DE ) and did a google on "rashes that are sore." This one doesn't itch but it is sore and painful and I'm feeling more "flu-like" by the second, accompanied by little "shooting pains" on my right side.

Wellllllll (not saying this is it, but looks VERY likely) - what I came up with was shingles. I mentioned that to my mother the other night since I'd had a mild case of shingles before, but was so fixated on it "having" to be from my psych meds that I just breezed by that idea.

All my symptoms from A-Z relate to shingles, plus the photos posted look exactly like my rash.

Oh, joy!

Going to try to pull myself together to get to Dr.

(Since we're on the subject - and I know how "interesting" this is ) - When I was early 20's, I got this weird rash that began as a tiny rash on my palms, wrists and stomach. In about 2 hours I was scratching to beat the band!!

The next day the little rash had morphed into a large rash, each approximately the size of a quarter - covered my entire body, including the soles of my feet. As the day went on I became very ill and my eyes were very swollen.

My mother kept taking my temperature, which was sky-rocketing. (Now that I look back on this, I'm wondering why we didn't go to the ER. My stepfather is very allergic to all kinds of things so he was convinced it was an allergy of some sort. Went to his allergist who told us to see GP.)

By this time I felt like I was going to die and couldn't even sit up on the way to the Dr. - the same GP I had gone to as a teenager.

GP said it could be a number of things but was going to prescribe for what he thought it was and wrote a script for some type of "horse pills" that we got filled and I took a dose of on our way home and even before arriving I felt 100% better. We called GP to see what the skin rash had been. He called it "pyrodermia" - and the reason I was so ill was that the welts on the outside of my body were also on my internal organs.

He said it's a virus that is in everyone's body and in 1 in a billion (exagerating there) people, it activates. Once having had it, a person is no more likely to have it again. I found out later one of my cousins had a bout of it.

My Dr. said he would have normally put me in the hospital to diagnose it for sure...the reason he didn't:

This was 1 week before my wedding. Did I "really" have pyrodermia and if so, could the anxiety have caused it?

Truth is stranger than fiction