Chicken pox and ferry travel?

[NancyKominsky]

Dd1 has what looks suspiciously like chicken pox...about 20 spots on legs and hands. We are due to go on holiday in about 2/3 weeks time and although she will be fine by then there is dd2 to consider...

Will the ferry let us travel if dd2 has chicken pox? My ferry company doesnt say anything on its website.

Don't know, for sure, but it may be OK. What sort of ferry is it? How long is the journey? If you will have a cabin, you could keep her in there. If not, you can keep away from other travellers. If you do pass on the pox, it couldn't be traced back to you!

BTW, my dd has chickenpox at the moment and the spots started (typically) on the trunk...does your dd have any there?

If your dd2 has chickenpox, she might be off-colour (or a downright pain) for several days, hope you're not going anywhere too hot!

Going to France Tissy - last year it was 45 degrees in the heatwave but hopefully we'll miss that this year

Its a fast 2.5 hour crossing, we are going in club class.

dd1's spots are on her legs and hands. The pharmacist agreed that it looked exactly like cp but was surprised that it wasnt on her tum. This is her first spotty day though so apparently more may appear. They arent clustered together the way that bites might be, she has about 15 spots on each leg, all over the leg, rather nicely arranged if you know what i mean.

My dd's first spots were on her bum and one shoulder, next day chest, back neck face, hands, legs in that order!!

No help at all, but when I was student, travelling round Europe in a van with some others, one of us got chicken pox (no idea who from!), and felt so ill he decided to fly home from Brussels. We were worried that he would get turfed off the plane, but he wasn't, they didn't look at his face, and if they had, might have thought that he had a bad case of acne! He left us to get his (already purchased) duty free allowance through customs in the van, and bought more at the airport before flying back. Luckily the customs people at Dover were so busy looking/ sniffing for drugs in our van that they didn't notice the extra booze!

Sorry, completely irrelevant!

Most people i know(myself included) have had our second child come out in spots within 2 weeks of the firsts spots. Once the spots come out they arnt as contageous are they?

In answer to your question Tessiebear, it seems to be generally considered from what I have read and advice from GP that spots are contagious for about 5 days or until completely scabbed over. We had to cancel our holiday a couple of weeks ago, as ds got cp and we weren't allowed to fly.

DD2 has just recovered from CP - huge outbreak at nursery. General opinion nowadays is that the infectious period runs from about a week before the spots show until around 5 days after. Nurseries/schools locally are happy to accept children back after 5 days.

However, DD2's friend caught chicken pox same time as DD2 and herself and family were due to travel to France by ferry. They had to cancel and spent the week in Cornwall.

Nancy, have you been to your gp. Chicken pox usually starts on the torso. If your dd has spots on her legs and hands, it may well be Hand, Foot and Mouth, which has a different contagion schedule than chicken pox and usually is accompanied by horrible mouth ulcers. No cure for it, but worth knowing if that's what your dd has, so that you don't think that she has had chickenpox when she hasn't. Also, adults can catch it and it's really unpleasant so you may want to be prepared.