Quick chicken pox question about kids passing to adults

[RUNFORLOVE]

Hello

My two year old has chicken pox since last Friday.

My sister comes over a few times a week with her 9 mth old so he has been around my two year old during the contagious stage.

So far i'm on day five of the pox and our older daughter age 6 does not seem to show any signs of it so far.

Can you tell me if the incubation period is 7-21 before the spots show and all this time they are contagious?

My father has cancer at the moment and quite weak so obviously i am steering clear for now but my sister was over there on saturday and my father was holding her 9mth old son who could be in the "incubation period".

Could my father now be at risk of getting shingles? I'm sure he said he has had chicken pox, so if he has can he still get shingles because his immune system is low?

I feel awful now that I didnt explain enough to me sister, I thought she knew about the incubation period. can my father reduce his chances now of getting shingles?

thanks

anyone know?

thanks x

You can't catch shingles from someone with CP. Once you have had CP, the virus stays in your body and can re-emerge as shingles when your immune system is compromised. So it comes from within IYSWIM. On the other hand, someone who has not had CP can catch it from a person with shingles.

I'm not sure but it would be worth him mentioning to his carers that he may have been exposed

Is he having chemo? If so his immunity might be compromised meaning he could be vulnerable to anything

They can give him something to help reduce the chances of him getting anything

Worth mentioning anyway

Thanks - I will tell him to tell his doctor.

I feel so bad because he is already overwhelmed with medication right now and he is just getting over an infection after a major so his immune system is definitely weak.

my nephew may not even have it my youngest was around so many people with chicken pox in the past and she never caught it then.

i maybe over reacting.

they are contagious 2 days before the spots appear

link

But OP I thought you wanted to know if your Dad could catch shingles from a child which was incubating CP...and he definitely can't see here.

jellycat - i did thanks i should have said that after i posted this i had a look on the nhs website which also said he cant catch shingles from chicken pox. but i was then worried because when i called my sister said he cnat remember if he has had it.

EldonAve - i've had a look on that site and didnt see two days before. so you are saying they are only contagious for two days before the spots appear?. therefore if my nephews spots come out next fri and he has not seen my dad since today then there would be no way myt dad could catch it?

thanks

It is in the 3rd para of the introduction

"Chickenpox is most common in children who are between two and eight years of age, although you can develop chickenpox at any age. You are infectious from about two days before the rash appears until roughly five days after."

just read it again - doh! i skipped the vital info.

for some reason i have in my head they are contagious for a 7-21 days before the spots appear.

thats great then, fingers crossed my nephew will not have an spots for a week at least x

We looked into it in similar circumstances. My mum is ill, but in her case she reckoned she'd never had CP.

Found out exactly the same as Jellycat and EldonAve have said.

If 9mo has no spots yet, he shouldn't have been contagious when he was with your dad.

However, docs did say that we should keep infectious/possibly infectious kids well away from her whether she'd had it or not, owing to her compromised immune system.

If it's any help, everyone told me their subsequent DCs got it almost exactly 14 days on the dot after DC1 had got spots. I was sceptical but it was 14 days exactly between DD and DS getting spots.

But try not to worry. DD was in grandma's house and kissed her hours before we noticed her spots and granny never caught anything. (But she could well have had it when she was little - there's noone left to remember!)

My DD's spot came out exactly on 2 weeks after ds as well.
Unfortunately the day before ds's spots came out we bumped into a friend in supermarket. The little girl was having treatment for leukhemia and she ended up having to go up to great ormand street for a speacial chicken pox jab.