To wonder why people are so ill informed about chicken pox?

[knackeredmother]

I have encountered 2 people in the last 2 days who have allowed their infectious chicken pox children to mix with others.
My ds has respiratory problems and is frequently on steroids so needs to avoid contact. We are just waiting for him to be off steroids for a few weeks so he can be vaccinated (on hospital advice). I am also a health professional so have seen first hand the devastating effects the pox can have on cancer patients and pregnant women for example.
I realise therefore that I am more sensitive than most about this topic.
However, last week a new neighbour invited my ds to play , when I picked him up I saw her dd was covered with weeping ( not healed) chicken pox sores. When I asked her if her dd had chicken pox she just replied 'oh has he not had it?'. I explained about his immune system being suppressed with steroids but she did not seem to get it.
Today I have just met another mother in a soft play with her...yes you've guessed it.....chicken pox laden ds. Again not healed over, spots came out yesterday.
This mum is intelligent and lovely and I think I may have just spoiled a potential friendship with my little rant about the risks. She genuinely did not realise and said she thought as chickenpox was so common that people didn't really bother keeping them inside anymore.
So, AIBU to think the majority of people are ignorant of the quarantine advice re chicken pox and if so WHY is this?
Oh and expect a post from me in a week or so with a ds hospitalised with varicella pneumonia (pessimist, me? Never!)

Yes I was relieved that mine got it, because ds1 is 8 and I was worried he might not catch it before he was old enough to make it much worse.

He did have it pretty badly. They both did, but anyway, it's done with.

I would not have exposed them intentionally though. a parent at school brought he child every day when he was contagious, and let him loose in the playground to play with all the other children. I thought this was completely out of order. Two weeks later half the class was off with it.

She also took him to the GP with it. I would have thought it fairly obvious to someone who works in a nursery what it was, but no, she had to take him there and get it confirmed. Why??

Drives me mad. I just don't understand that mindset.

YANBU. Some people don't have a clue about the risks to immunosuppressed people.

People google everything, why can't they goggle about when it's ok to take child with cp out
Sadly dh has been exposed a number of times to cp when people have taken in scabbed kids out
For him that means a dose of anti virals which make him feel pretty naff!! Same for misdee dh. They spend so long fighting seems silly that cp can risk their life's but it does!! think about them before you take kids to supermarket

How is your DH now Lisa, haven't seen you in a while x

I've thinking about those who think immunosuppressed people should restrict their life further to save them staying in due to CP. They need to think more. People who are immunosupressed already have their life restricted.

With CP isolation can be as little as 5 days, upto maybe 2 weeks and it's very unusual to be as long as 2 weeks.

What's 2 weeks of relative boredom compared to the rest of your life?

What's 2 weeks compared to an eternity of death?

Those who would go out just consider how you would feel if you were immunosuppressed, consider how you would feel if you were having to look at your loved one in a coma thanks to CP or worse arranging a funeral.

Quite so Hecuba. I really cannot understand why some people find being restricted to their own house for 7 - 10 days so unmanageable (other than having to take siblings to school)

I am very clued up about the risks to vulnerable people and I did observe quasi-quarantine with my two when they had it, eg I took 5 year old DS on the school run strapped into a pushchair with a rain cover to stop him running around.

But it does make it more difficult to motivate yourself to be strict when I knew full well that two days before he'd been running around the playground, incubating it and infectious as hell, holding hands with my mate's premature 6 month old baby. I can see why people think its a bit futile - you do it because you don't want to be personally knowingly responsible for harm, not because you think it will necessarily help.

Slightly OT I was furious for the school for not informing us much earlier that there was CP going around - if we'd known then mate could easily have made alternative arrangements and kept her baby at home, (baby was fine thank heavens) and I would have known instantly that DS's slight temperature and "is that a spot or something, no I don't think it is?" over the weekend were probably CP rather than a random minor virus and I'd have quarantined him 24 hours earlier.

I thought it was most contagious before the spots showed?

'personally knowingly responsible for harm, not because you think it will necessarily help'

That's only one reason because it will help even though it doesn't totally eliminate risk.

While they are incubating it they will be in contact with x number of people. Once you know they have it you may be in contact with the same people but going out could bring them in contact with more people so you are protecting them.

Also the risk of transmission is not 100% even for the immunosuppressed (although it's high) so for someone they have seen while incubating it reducing the amount of contact they have does reduce the risk of them catching it.

Of course we cannot eliminate risk completely but it is our duty as responsible members of society to reduce risk. Staying in due to CP is boring but has no long term adverse effects on the people staying in, where as going out well read the thread.

'I thought it was most contagious before the spots showed?'

It is from a few days before but you are unlikely to know at this point. It continues to be infectious until ALL the spots are scabbed over. At that point you DO know they have so can take precautions.

I have seen the nasty side of CP, DD contracted it while on prolonged steroids and the first sign she had it was headache, stiff neck, aversion to light, vomiting snd prolonged (2+ hour) seizure. Thankfully she has no lasting damage from it. Complications from CP are rare but they do happen..

Meant to say that we never did find out where she contracted CP from as we had no known cases in the family or in her peer group when she caught it.

For those of you who have immunosuppressed family members who have to get injections when they come into contact with CP - how does that work when they could be coming into contact with people who are contagious but haven't broken out in spots yet?

YANBU though I don't think people are ill informed at all. I think they just don't give a toss. They don't want to be bored/limited in what they do and they don't give a rats arse about anyone else at all. My DD also has a compromised immune system and was very unwell when she had CP. It's not that unusual or rare.

bumbleymummy there's not much you can do about that though is there. I feel very differently about DD catching something when the person/parent is unaware that they are infectious than I do about someone who knows they are and just don't care. DD caught it from someone who had about half a dozen (unhealed) spots on their torso. I know this because their mum told me later and hadn't mentioned it because they 'thought I wouldn't mind'.

Thanks Megatron - I can understand that you would be more cross with someone who is going out with CP knowingly but I was wondering how it works risk wise. Once they've contracted CP can they do anything for it? Does it just mean that you're at risk constantly when you go out?

I mean even if everyone with CP stayed at home wouldn't you still be at risk from all the people who don't know they have it yet? Is there anything that can be done about that?

Both ds' were in contact with a child who with in an hour of us parting company the parents discovered spots on him. Ds2 had been cuddling the child, sat in a car with all the doors and windows shut and they were together inside playing for 15 mins or so. Despite this contact with the child while obviously highly contagious we avoided further contact with him once we knew he had, changing plans for arranged playdate for the 2 older siblings (his sister had already had it when he was a tiny baby). I know now that if either of my ds' or dd come down with it then it is through accidental exposure, not deliberate. So far we haven't. I would never expose my deliberately to it but I know I can not prevent accidental contact.

People with suppressed immunity are always at risk from contracting diseases, but the risk are minimised if people follow the nhs advice. I suppose it wouldn't be an issue if there was a vaccination programme in place.

OK.

You cannot catch chicken pox twice. It mutates at a very slow rate and once you've got the antibodies that is it. Every case of folks thinking they have had chicken pox twice are folks who have misdiagnosed similar illnesses or allergies.

It can be nastier when you get it as an adult but the myth of "if you don't get chicken pox as a child you'll catch it as shingles as an adult" is just that, a myth. In fact the converse is true: you cannot get shingles as an adult unless you have had chicken pox as a child.

Chicken pox is a herpes virus like coldsores and herpes. Once you've been infected it withdraws to nervous system. It can then return infecting you along the line of the nerve; shingles.

There is a chicken pox vaccine but I don't know if it is a live or dead vaccine off the top of my head. If it has to be a live one then I'm guessing it carries the risk of shingles whereas a dead one wouldn't but that is just speculation from me. I know that there is also a shingles vaccine.

Given how serious it can be for those with suppressed immune systems, pregnant women, the old and the very young I am eternally shocked by the concept of chicken pox parties. I am particularly pissed off with the lie that "I'm doing it to stop them from getting shingles when they are older" when they are actually increasing their child's chance of getting shingles from 0 to 100% (not 100% chance they'll get it but 100% chance they could get it).

Ignorance about diseases is a real issue and as usual the hate mail and other newspapers do not help. I think this is something that needs teaching more in schools. I've already written in a couple of lessons to look at lies in the media about MMR etc and bring up Dr Mr Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy and how lies and poor science are over reported whereas real science not always being as sexy can be ignored. During that I do touch on how serious some childhood illnesses are and go into detail about fatalities due to Measles and Mumps and, of course, the ticking time bomb of having a big chunk of society not having immunity to rubella. The lack of herd immunity to rubella among an ageing population of girls is a disaster waiting to happen.

I will write up some work on the truth about a range of "childhood" illnesses but it will only be one school.

So YANBU.

Hazey, I don't think the solution is a mass vaccination program.

Hubble, lack of herd immunity to rubella is not an issue as long as the women contract it themselves (or get themselves vaccinated against it) before they get pregnant. We have never had the required level of vaccination cover in the UK to have herd immunity to rubella anyway. Also, mumps is very rarely fatal and it is usually adults who get it worse than children. Hth

You can catch chicken pox twice, I know of plenty of people who have been unlucky enough to.

Of course you can get chicken pox twice. Just as immunisation does not confer 100% immunity, so does catching the diesease naturally. Sometimes the immune system isn't primed properly the first time, or sometimes a persons immune system isn't working efficiently the second time for example.

Hubbie, I think you may need to rewrite some of your lessons :)