HI, thanks for using healthcare magic The use of anti viral medications should help the rash to improve faster. If you are using anti viral medications and there is no improvement whatsoever, then you may want to be screened for conditions that maybe affecting your immune response eg diabetes, any meds that may be affecting immune system, autoimmune diseases, HIV. Pain medications can be used to decrease the discomfort. If the traditional pain medication is not effective then medications such as lyrica, gabapentin, tegretol etc can be used These treat nerve related pain. Some persons do have long term pain from shingles, this is caused post herpetic neuralgia but it is hard to determine which persons may have this problem. I hope this helps