have you given your child the chicken pox vaccine

[passivehoovering]

Hi all,

DD is 3.5 and is about to start her second year at nursery. She hasn't had chicken pox, and I really don't want her to. I don't want my darling child to get ill, feel bed, get scars, have awful complications, be seperated from her friends...So I was thinking about getting the Chicken pox vacine for her. I have mooted this with friends who also have children but they seem to want their kids to get chicken pox so I am wavering a bit.

If you have vacinated your children could you tell me how you went about it and where you found info? I don't know if I should try her GP in the first instance and ask them for info from Medline and if they know of anywhere that does the vacine. Also how was your child after? Anything else you can tell me would be much appreciated too.

Thanks

Yes, Elaine I know that. But that is usually and if doctors aren't seeing so many cases they aren't going to even recognise the mild ones that easily.

why do they need to recognise mild cases?

Because of the risk of spreading to other people. I was just about to take DS2 out when it occurred to me that he had chickenpox and that was only because DS1 had just had it. He had 28 spots in total, and they hadn't all appeared when I was trying to work out what he had, but that is still enough to infect other people. I still got him checked by a doctor because I really wasn't convinced. If the doctor had only seen CP in pictures in a textbook she might well have missed it too.

Is it not a reportable disease (can't remember the right phrase for the moment) in the US?

However much I value medical education, I wouldn't keep my kids unvaccinated to provide a teaching tool for doctors.

I also don't see the value of taking a child with mild cp into a doctors waiting room just to have cp diagnosed.

I wonder how many 'diagnoses' of mild cp are actually cp? I had a rash when about 8yo. We duly went to the doc. I wasn't ill at all and the spots weren't itchy. I had about 30 spots in all. He took out a big book and flipped through it for a while and finally, looking menacingly over his glasses, declared cp. That was it. I was never convinced I'd had it and finally was very ill a few years ago with what was almost certainly cp. Because I knew what it was this time, no need to see the doc - I took paracetamol and that was that. In terms of the statistics, I'd had cp as a child (and maybe I did, who knows?) and not as an adult!? Accurate reporting is and always has (surely?) been an issue in medical science.

LeBFG, my younger daughter was diagnosed with CP at the same time as her sister, although she only had about ten little red spots on her face (that never blistered).

Turns out it wasn't CP, as she caught that for definite about three weeks later.

LeFBG - you might have had CP. I might have said further down thread, I've lots track, but after taking DS2 to the OOH docs to get him looked at, I was told that if you had 25 spots or less you could catch it again because you might not have developed sufficient immunity. There isn't a world of difference between 25 and 30, especially as they are difficult to keep track of in the nooks and crannies. I don't think anybody tells the virus how many spots it needs to bring out to protect somebody.

On the other hand if they didn't crust over or follow the usual pattern maybe it wasn't. I don't suppose you will ever know (or probably care!) now.

That's my point BBB - maybe I had it, maybe I didn't. In mild cases, does cp present all the symptoms? Is it so easy to diagnose when kids get all sorts of red spots/rashes?

I've lost track of the point now.

That's what happens when you get sucked into to 2 similar threads.

Wasn't I saying that mild cases would be even easier to miss if doctors had never seen CP at all due to a mass vaccination programme which must put the unprotected and vulnerable at greater risk? If they are not easy to diagnose in their mild form and that diagnosis gets harder, then vulnerable people (mainly adults who have never had CP but won't be given the vaccine specifically) are more likely to become ill due to the implimentation of a vaccine programme. I suppose that is a risk with all vaccinations, not just CP.

I think I know why I am confused - I am arguing for vaccination on one thread because generally I am all for them, and against it on this one, but only specifically CP because shingles complications. I am still not convinced that a mass CP vaccination programme is for the greater good and until it is, I don't think the NHS should be prioritising it. Of course, if you want to vaccinate your own children at your own expense that should be easy to arrange (easier than the single jab MMRs were for a start and certainly easier than gastrognome had to put up with) but the health service view of vaccination programmes will be very different from the individual by necessity. The argument that 'I want to do best for my children' doesn't really figure in deciding whether nor not a national programme should go ahead or not and though it is hard on the individual who doesn't get what they want, the greater good has to prevail at that level of decision making.

I think it might be wise if I withdrew from one of these threads to avoid my head exploding. Since I appear to be repeating myself I think it might have to be this one.

Hi all
My 13th month old girl got vaccinated for MMR/Chickenpox and after 10 days she started getting very high fever ranging from 37-39.5 with no sign of any illness and no symptoms. The mood was great and she continued to behave as normal. We took the kid to hospital on the second day when her temp got to 38.3 and the doctor told us to give the baby temp reducing medicine e.g Panadol, Capol etc. On the 3rd day baby?s temp soared to 39.5 with a slight rash on her body and we rushed to hospital again. We consulted three pediatricians and all of them advised (well they were confident) that what our baby was going through had nothing to do with the vaccination since side effects for vaccination lasted 2 days and considering that there were no other symptoms, they deduced that it was some kind of a virus. As they never think out of the box and always go with the easiest option, they prescribed antibiotics. Not wanting to subject our child to this treatment, we consulted our relative who is a doctor in Russia and this is what we were advised: 5 - 10 days after vaccination possible specific vaccine reactions can take place, characterized by fever, symptoms of acute respiratory disease, a kind of rash - all of this is classified as "graft measles.". I am glad to say that she was right and the tempt dropped immediately on the fourth day to normal and the rash disappeared. Just as well we didn?t subject our child to unnecessary treatment of antibiotics.

Hi just thought i would add my tuppence worth. I wish i had thought of the vaccine, i didnt know of it and thought like everyone else that if they caught CP it would be mild. I have twins, my son had it very mildly. My daughter on the other hand had to be admitted to hosp with infected spots. After a week in hosp on a drip she was discharged but it had to be the worst week of my life. And prior to being admitted she was so ill that i didnt sleep for two days as i was so worried. Yes i went to OOH Drs but they just gave me anti B's but that didnt work. Anyway she still has the scars all over her torso from the mess her body was in.... So Im in favour of the vaccine... I have no time to read through all the other posts Im sorry...xxx

from the NHS - this is why - www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vaccinations/Pages/chickenpox-vaccine-questions-answers.aspx

Why isn't the chickenpox vaccination part of the routine childhood immunisation schedule?

There's a worry that introducing chickenpox vaccination for all children could increase the risk of chickenpox and shingles in adults.

While chickenpox during childhood is unpleasant, the vast majority of children recover quickly and easily. In adults, chickenpox is more severe and the risk of complications increases with age.

If a childhood chickenpox vaccination programme was introduced, people would not catch chickenpox as children because the infection would no longer circulate in areas where the majority of children had been vaccinated.

This would leave unvaccinated children susceptible to contracting chickenpox as adults, when they are more likely to develop a more severe infection or a secondary complication, or in pregnancy, when there is a risk of the infection harming the baby.

We could also see a significant increase in cases of shingles in adults. Being exposed to chickenpox as an adult – for example, through contact with infected children – boosts your immunity to shingles.

If you vaccinate children against chickenpox, you lose this natural boosting, so immunity in adults will drop and more shingles cases will occur.