My 5 year old kids both woke up yesterday covered in chicken pox. It’s awful watching them suffer.
My son has a blister the size of a 5 cent piece!
Look at the bright side.
At least this keeps you from being evil and sending them to play with other kids who have chicken pox.
You mean like chicken pox parties?
I feel pretty strongly opposed to that kind of thing. In rare cases kids die from varicella related complications. It’d be terrible enough if that happened, but imagine how you’d feel as a parent if you actively infected your child! It would be bloody hard to live with.
But yeah, hearing you. I’m grateful that they both got it at once and we can most likely tick that box now.
1 Like
Well, it’s better they get it as kids than as adults. I’ve seen a few adults get it, and it’s really bad. One guy still has scars and blotches on his skin ten years later. It took him months of suffering to get over the worst of it. For kids, it passes relatively quickly.
1 Like
I never got it, and in desperation my mom brought me over to sick kids’ houses, to no avail.
It’s possible I had one of those mild variants, where you get maybe a little fever and 1 pock and don’t think anything of it. But instead of testing me for antibodies, when I was 20 or so the family doctor just gave me the vaccine.
So that’s always an option if you don’t want to do chicken pox parties and your kids are starting to get a bit too old and haven’t seemed to have it yet.
Actually, I thought they’d started adding varicella to general vaccine sets for kids? Or not in NZ?
But I too knew of a guy who was only like 23 with chicken pox. Horribly sick, thought he’d end up permanently deaf or brain damaged.
Yeah, it’s being introduced this year I think, which is too late for us. My kids had their last vaccinations a year ago. I did have them on a waiting list to have the vaccine anyway (it’s currently optional) but they caught it before more supplies came in.
I did have it when I was a kid. I don’t remember having a bad time although I do remember that my mum told me that I should resist the need for scratching… What I remember the most is that I could jump on the bed and I didn’t have to go to school and I could drink as much coke as I wanted.
In my family, was a limited good because there were so many of us… that nothing last long… so my mother always limited the amount of “anything” that we could eat or drink.
So, basically, I was having the time of my life 
2 Likes
Ooh - nasty.
I had chicken pox when I was three, at the same time as my brother (who was six). Just to add to the mix, my mother was laid up with a slipped disc. So she was on a “zed-bed”, with a board under the mattress for extra support, on one side of the sitting room, my brother was on the sofa and I had the two armchairs pushed together to make a bed. (Fortunately, my godmother was a retired nurse, so she ran round after the three of us while my father was at work.) I do remember being told not to scratch, but otherwise I can’t have felt too poorly, because I remember being pleased at having company all day.
They are miserable with itchiness (and they have them on their gums as well, which hurt) but otherwise are in good spirits. Being housebound is frustrating (for all of us) though, and so is juggling work around sick kids.
But yeah, as far as illnesses go, this one is more bark than bite.
2 Likes
No, I don’t remember to look like that… although I still have a little scar from that time… so maybe I did have one or two.
But yes, I guess that having my mother’s full attention (when my siblings where at school) and being able to drink or eat what I wanted without limits made it for any discomfort that I could feel.
My mother was fed ud with us for sure. I was the 6th and the last to get it (it started with my little sister and thanks to her, we all got it. The other 4 already passed it when they were younger).
My mother was out luck though… A week after I recovered, my little sister got measles and… well, we all got it thanks to her 
I’m 30 and I still have chicken pox scars. I don’t know how old I was when I got it, but I don’t even remember it so it had to be under 4.
That bites. It is the worst thing to see your kids sick. It helps to see that kids can take a
beating with many sicknesses and yet smile. I had it as a kid and it was itchy but I was happy it happened during school exams!Hope they get well soon.
Yeah, that always blows me away.
This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.