The Allergy Epidemic

[ShadowHM]

I wasn't too worried about the chicken pox, but we still had to take her in to the doctor to get him to verify that she had it, so that we would be exempt from the immunization requirements. The nurses acted like she had the plague, and we had to go in through the back entrance. The shuffled her into a room and scooted out of there quickly. Luckily, our doctor has been practicing for a number of years, and he had a more relaxed attitude about the whole thing. He did ask if he could bring his medical student in to show him the rash, though, because he said that he didn't get to see many good examples of the chicken pox rash any more, and he wanted his student to be familiar with it.

I have a chicken pox anecdote too. :)

Chicken pox vaccines are not mandatory here (AFAIK). My two oldest have had it when they were 7 and 4. I was getting a bit concerned because the two youngest had not managed to catch it (they were not born yet when the first two had it).

Then, the third child got an odd rash on his face. He was prescribed antibiotics because it looked like a staph infection to the doctor near the cottage. It didn't get better. I took him to our family doctor, who carefully examined him, and then asked if I would mind if she called in her partner for a second opinion. They conferred and decided that it was shingles. I asked how that was possible, since he had not had (as far as I knew) chickenpox, although he had been exposed to it. The answer was that it is completely possible to have asymptomatic chickenpox. The rash eventually went away and the itch was mitigated by a topical naturopathic ointment. The good news is that it was a very mild case of shingles, and in a place where it was not chafed by clothing or mixed in hair, which are often the places where adults get it. And, even better, I now know that I don't have to worry about him getting chickenpox as an adult.

The jury is still out on son #4.... I *hope* he too managed to have an asymptomatic case. But I have no way of knowing.

Chickenpox is nasty for adults. My brother-in-law managed to catch it from my older children. He had been assured by his mother that he had had it in childhood, so he came over to visit when they had it. Memory can fail - she was recalling his two brothers, and his father confirmed that later. He had chickenpox on every square inch of his body (think about it :ph34r:) including his mouth and throat.