Shingles

[Peggydoll]

After several days with DD1 (7) having odd clusters of insect bites on her torso it suddenly occurred to me that maybe they weren't insect bites so I took her to the gp and sure enough it's shingles [embarrassed]

I was concerned cos she'd been at school all week. Anyway, the GP reassured me that there was only a very slight risk of someone catching chicken pox from her if they touched her spots, but as they were under her clothing that wouldn't be a problem- but don't swim until the spots have scabbed.

Anyway school sent her home (despite her being fit as a fiddle and having been at school during the early spot phase) until all the spots have scabbed. They have a top-secret early pg member of staff so I'm not going to argue with that.

I wondered if anyone here had experience of the management childhood shingles?

I know we've been really lucky. DD is v itchy and has complained of her skin hurting (the nerve line) but she's had no other signs of illness. I'm sending her back to school tomorrow (with plasters on spots in case she knocks the scabs) In actual fact (apart from the complication of me misding work) we've had a lovely few days in summer weather..... ;-)

Hi Peggy my DD has also had shingles - I misdiagnosed them as scabies! When I took her to the gp she was given anti-virals which did stop it spreading.

I was surprised as DD seemed well in herself which was why I hadn't suspected shingles. I also put plasters on the scabs in case she knocked them - be careful when you take these off as the skin can pull and is very sensitive for quite a while afterwards.

Once the spots have scabbed they drop off like chicken pox scabs and leave little flat red marks which fade in time but took much longer to fade than chicken pox scars. My DD did complain of nerve pain on and off for a few weeks after the scabs had dropped off - the gp had said this could be the case - I gave her nurofen which stopped the pain.

I think if you are unlucky enough to get shingles as an adult you can be very unwell but for children it seems to be milder.

Hope that helps a little.

One of mine had it aged about 10 I think. He had a week off school but it was just before the Christmas holidays, but was pretty wiped out for a few weeks afair. He did go in for one day with plasters over the scabs, but wasn't really up to it.

It took a good few weeks before he seemed himself again and 2 years later he still remembers how rough he felt. Took us all by surprise.

Dd had this at age 10 too. She really suffered with the nerve pain and we had a few tearful days and nights. Those few days exhausted her so much that she took a week to fully recover. Have some nurofen at hand in case the nerve pain gets bad and we were given calamine lotion for the blisters.

Thanks everyone.

I am so surprised that DD1 is normal in all respects apart from the spots, although thinking back she was a bit washed out just before the spots came, but she's a very active child so I just thought she'd overdone it.

She's got antivirals (that's what alerted school really) and she's had no more spots since then. She has complained of hurting, but not to the point of disrupting her sleep/ activity but I'll keep nurofen on hand just in case. I'm really hoping she'll have no lasting effects from it- I know it can linger in the system for a good long while (residual pain etc). She's been lucky so far...

DS had them at 18 months and he seemed rather unbothered, though the spots were livid in a big cluster across the right of his back. Took a good while to clear up and you can still see the silvery scars now 2 years later -makes me sad . I'm hoping they will fade more as his skin grows and stretches.

We didn't even notice he'd had chickenpox!

Beehatch dd still has those silvery scars on her back. She's 13 now and is quite self-conscious about them. She chose a really high backed swimsuit for school swimming too.

Oh your poor DD that's a very self conscious age . I'm hanging on to the hope that as DS was so young his skin has a lot of stretching and growing to do still.

My DD's had them too - just recently: she was four. Apparently it's far more likely if a child had chickenpox before the age of one year old, which DD did. DS (2) caught pox from hers but they had been sharing baths: like you we didn't realise it was shingles and thought it was just eczema, but the GP soon put us right!

We kept DD off school but only because there are two children in her class who are immunocompromised. I would be very surprised if a primary school teacher had not had chickenpox TBH - it's only a risk to pregnant women if they've never had it.

DD1 was 2.5 when she had chicken pox, so quite young but not excessively so. She wasn't ill with that either!

Scarring may be an issue because she's scratched so badly, but I think the patches are likely to be covered even by swimwear, because they're quite high on her rib cage, front and back. (She already has osme silvery marks from chicken pox and molluscum, but they're really not too obvious)It's not nice for a young person if they feel self conscious.