Before the shingles rash appears, diagnosis of this condition may be difficult. Symptoms of shingles can mimic other conditions. The initial symptoms may include itching, numbness, tingling, or pain on one side of the body or face. During this stage, the pain may be so severe that it may be mistaken for kidney stones, pleurisy, gallstones, appendicitis, or even a heart attack depending on where the affected nerve is located on the body.

Your doctor can distinguish shingles from chicken pox, poison ivy, or other types of rash by the way the lesions are distributed on the body. The blisters of the shingles rash generally appear in the pattern of a band (dermatome) on one side of the body.

In addition to looking at how the rash appears on your body, your doctor may also take a scraping or swab of the blisters to send to a laboratory for analysis.