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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To take my pox ridden ds on public transport

136 replies

veryworriedme · 29/06/2012 15:24

am feeling a bit sorry for myself and my ds and so wonder if this has made me very selfish. My ds aged 2 has been in a hip spica cast from his chest to his ankles for the last month which has been tough. Now he has chicken pox. My dd has not yet come out in any spots but I kept her away from activities just in case she is infectious. However, I have taken my ds on the bus as it's about the only thing he can enjoy at the moment. This was in fact an empty bus and I would not have got on it if we could not have kept away from people or if there were children but the bus, but that's not really the point is it - there could be a pregnant woman for example. Is keeping him at home or just walking outside the only decent and responsible thing to do?

OP posts:

AmberLeaf · 30/06/2012 12:06

It may have been more than 2 weeks actually, it was a good while ago so I can't remember.

TheBigJessie · 30/06/2012 12:24

Well, adults with shingles don't always stay at home! I caught cp from one such!

crashdoll · 30/06/2012 12:27

Some of you have been really tough on the OP as she didn't realise it at the time. It's fine to gently educate and explain the risks but there's no need to do it rudely. In the last 3 years, I have learnt a lot about the risks of having a lowered immune system. Before my illness, I would never have known this. Why would I? People who take their children out despite knowing the risks are selfish but people who didn't know, genuinely didn't know!

AmberLeaf · 30/06/2012 12:47

But crashdoll she. did realise at the time! It says so in her OP.

Inertia · 30/06/2012 14:08

A relative of mine was off work (at his manager's insistence) for several weeks with shingles because he worked with a pregnant woman .

HauntedLittleLunatic · 30/06/2012 14:40

nannyOgg

The hpa (who are the advisors for the NHS) used to say that a child only has to be isolated for 5 days. There is a really useful link here but I can't open it on my phone to check that the advise re 5 days is still current, although the document hasn't been updated since 2010 and I'm 95% sure it hasn't changed since I last looked. This is the advice I was quoting.

It is confusing - cos the hpa advice page specific to chickenpox looks identical to the nhs which does say (which makes sense if one is advising the other). On that page it does say until all crusted over which it quotes as being 5-6 days after first spot. This page is the most recently reviewed, so I would agree that is the most current advice. The point I was trying to make - which still stands imo - is that children are still alarmingly spotty after the infectious period. During this time they will be around the shops quite safely.

www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1203496946639

HauntedLittleLunatic · 30/06/2012 14:43

Chicken pox is spread via airborne particles as a respiratory infection. It is necessary to isolate.

Shingles is not spread as a respiratory illness. It is only spread via contact with the rash. As a consequence there is no need for isolation if the rash can be fully covered (which is usually the case unless it is on the face).

I am 95% sure that is the advice you will find in the above hpa link.

Blueoctopus · 30/06/2012 15:21

Last summer I cancelled DSs birthday party because he had chicken pox. DD caught it at exactly the same time. It was the end of the summer holidays they had not been in contact with any children apart from standing next to a girl with very obvious chicken pox scabs when queuing for a ride at Peppa pig world. I can only assume this little girls parents had covered still weeping spots with clothes. Their selfish actions caused my son's birthday to be ruined but I can only imagine how many children caught the infection that day and had far worse consequences.

HauntedLittleLunatic · 30/06/2012 16:40

People out with infectious chickenpox is in 95+% of cases avoidable. And it does annoy me.

But it does also annoy me when people say that they got chicken pox because they stood next to someone with pox lesions and that is the only person they blame and quote it as tho it is the verifies source of their chickenpox. You don't know that is who you contracted it from. If the little girls visible pox were scanned it is quite likely she was not infectious. People that have visible pox are a LOT less infectious than they were for the 1-2 days before first spot.

That's not to say that other people she was with weren't incubating it and highly.infectious.

It is also fair to say that (even tho I have been corrected on current guidelines) the advice was that you could be out before they had all scabbed - and that it was only 5 days isolation from first spot.

WhiteWidow · 30/06/2012 18:13

sharklet that's exactly what I was thinking of when I saw this topic. That miss Marple scars me.

sharklet · 30/06/2012 18:46

Yes, I think in the story it was German measles rather than cp, but the intent and outcome are the same (apart from the murder!)you

And as for telling folk to shut up, I'm afraid when you open something like this up, there will be a lot of folk on MN who want to have thier say, who have just come across this thread. Sorry OP but there may be more folk who want to tell thier experience. Understand you get it now. :)

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