Two really nasty things are going around in Sioux Falls. One is a highly contagious disease, the other a virus living inside your body.

The Main McGreevy Clinic on the Avera McKennan campus in Sioux Falls has seen it's run-of-the-mill stomach flu and rotavirus, but family medicine physician Dr. Michael Stassen says it's a rash and cough that's getting the most attention.

Shingles is an extremely painful skin rash caused by the same virus (Herpes Zoster) that causes chicken pox and usually occurs in older people. Dr. Stassen says shingles is periodic so it's not usual they have seen patients with it recently. There is a vaccine available to prevent getting it, but once you have it the pain can last 5 weeks.

Pertussis or whooping cough is also making a come back.

Dr. Stassen says, "In a little kid you get lot of coughing and coughing so close together because it comes on so strong and so often you sound like a machine gun and there is no time to breath in between so you can pass out because you get short of oxygen or you can throw up."

Babies 2 months old and younger are susceptible because they haven't been vaccinated yet and in a few cases here they have had to hospitalize some.

Pertussis presents as a persistent cough. In China they actually call it the 100 day cough because it can last that long.   That's not good, but that is what's going around this week in Sioux Falls.