Would you take your dc to Tesco if they had chickenpox?

[QueenEagle]

ds3 came down with chickenpox on Saturday, bless him. Hopefully ds4 will catch it very soon as I am due to start work in 4 weeks.

I need ideas on what I can do with the two of them for the next week. I think we will go stir crazy if we don't go out! Today is first day off playgroup and I am getting frustrated already!

Of course, I need to get some groceries in, it will be ok to nip in and straight out wouldn't it, if I kept him in the trolley and didn't let him run around?

dh is not available until late on Thursday this week and I am severely limited to what help I can draw on from family members due to their own health problems - dad has leukaemia so he just CANNOT come anywhere near atm.

Hmm - when I asked my GP the same question she replied that realistically you have little chance of passing on the CP infection if you're not hugging and kissing people and that as long as you're quick and keep them in the trolley, all should be well - she would go.

speedymama and others who have said this - yes it is selfish to knowingly take infected kids out, I absolutely agree with that. In fact when I was pregnant with ds4, I went to watch ds1's football match. ds3 spent the entire morning playing with another little boy before I noticed he had chickenpox. I raved at the mother for not telling me a) because I was pregnant and b) because she didn't know if I was happy or not for her child to play with mine. She could not for the life of her, see my point and why I was so angry with her.

Now, I am no way in the same league as this woman, whatever some of you may say. I am here posting asking for an opinion on taking my poxed up child on an essential mini trip to the shop. I haven't been, I haven't knowingly brought him into contact with others (except for the trip to the chemist to get meds for him - no avoiding that at all). I am amazed at some hostile posts on here tbh.

I caught chicken pox when I was 30 and it was truly hiddeous. I had been 'exposed' the previous year whilst pregnant with ds and had to have live antibodies injected which provided me with immunity for 3 weeks. I asked my GP re vaccine and she said she wasn't aware of one! Anyway caught it when ds was a few weeks old and passed it on to him and dd1. We were all smothered - took 4 weeks for spots to dry up. So that meant 6 weeks in total we stayed in. Yes it was miserable and no, other than dh I don't have any other family support.

If dd2 doesn't catch it before she hits her teens, will take her for vaccine.

Can I ask if those of you who find is so selfish to take a child with CP onan essential trip to the shops would also find it just as selfish to let a child with a tummy bug go back to school/playgroup less than48 hours after the last bout of illness, or to allow a child with a bad cough to go to playgroup? I ask because I have a crippling fear of vomiting and often see people here posting that they are sending a child to school after being sick, and also because someone sent a child to playgourp with a cough just after Christmas and my son caught the cough, still has it very badly 3 weeks later, and is now being treated for a chest infection which the cough developed into. Comparing all this to my experience of CP, give me the CP anyday.

Whereabouts are you (roughly)? Is there any one on here who could give you a hand? I don't mind if I'm anywhere near you (can't remember) provided the garage gives me back my car (mot today)

it alwasy used to be 24 hours after tummy bug..

QueenEagle - I would only go out if completely unavoidable and then to take considerable care. When my dd had chicken pox I had no choice as I had to collect my son from school, but kept her in teh buggy and told everyone about it.

When DS had it we lived in a tiny flat and he was getting stir crazy so we used to go out for fresh air every morning with the commuters at 7am.

when dd had then the day before we had been round to see a friend of mine who was had chemo for non-hodgkins lymphoma. I had to tell her and she had to inform the hospital and I felt so guilty - she was lovely about it, but I think she had to have all sorts of tests. That made me asy the only if necessary bit.

I disagree with the way you have been approached on here. You came on here for advice not to be told off. sharing opinions and experience is what is so helpful about msnet, but making people feel bad or guilty destroys all that.

Agree DG.

Yes I do think it's selfish to send a child back to school with a tummy bug/bad cough etc and I don't do it. Although I know of others (often working) parents who do. But lets not forget chicken pox can cause birth deformaties and (fortunately rarely) death in newborns.

Yes, chickenpox is for most a mild disease, so understand the ones with well children considering it ok to "pop" to Tescos. For those of us with an immuno-suppressed child, it "can" be very serious, leading to complications such as pneumonia or encephalitis to name a couple. If my son has knowingly mixed with someone with chickenpox he has to have an anti-viral injection ... "Mixing" can mean being in an assembly hall with 300 kids ... We managed to avoid it for 3 years by taking him out of school every time there was chickenpox. Caught it before Xmas and had 6 days in hospital having an anti-viral intravenously 4 times a day. Not nice. So I can understand where Wire's coming from.

Well now, mammalocco, everything I have read in my childhood illnesses book says nothing about that. Does it really? Excepting the vulnerable and elderly, I always thought it was a mild childhood illness (as it says in the book).

But Dumbledores being exposed to chicken-pox if you are pregnant or have a vunerable immune system can be extremely dangerous.

Kaz101 - I understand where you are coming from; I'm sorry, it must be really hard for you and a constant worry.

But can I ask, what about if your child comes in to contact with someone "unkowingly" - what do you do then? Serious question, I am genuinely interested/curious as to how you live day to day with your child at school etc....they could potentially catch anything which could make them seriously ill so why the huge fuss about chickenpox in particular?

If chickenpox is by the mother caught in the first 14 weeks it can cause deformaties, if it's caught in the last 4 weeks, the baby can be born with it and can die. Hence my running to the local bio-lab to pick up my live antibodies and have four lots of the stuff inject into my rear. (GP "my what thick needles these are". "Cheers").

Everyone knows about the dangers of rubella for pregnant women but not chicken pox.

QE - even in those who are not particularly vulnerable it can occassionally be a very serious illlness. My friend's DD had it before Christmas and she ended up with celulitis - a bacterial infection under the skin. She spent 8 days in hospital on IV antibiotics. She's fine now but still has some scarring on her face.

Who else did not know what a potentially serious illness chickenpox could be? It can't just be me.

If it is so, why on earth is it not made more clear in the same way Rubella is?

DG, no my kids dont go to school when ill with anything contagious. I have made an exception for dd1 today, who has a water infection. she isnt contagious, and is well in herself, no temp etc, and is on medication.

i had a mini-row at dd2 nursery with the old head, who felt that if my dh was that vunalable i should be home-edding the kids.

That was my take too WWW, that is until I spent significant amounts of time in countries where the vaccine is routinely offered.

In the USA, Australia and South Africa CP rates are comparatively low (I don't the stats just quoting what a doctor was telling me) as the uptake on the jab is quite high.

My reasoning for having the vaccine for our next baby has more to do with scarring than whether or not CP is deadly. DS1 scarred badly on his face - and at age five is conscious of this. I feel badly that I could have prevented it.

I knew that CP is potentially very serious for certain people and at certain stages of pg.

I try not to cause DS to pass on any infectious condition...guilt still gnaws at me because a friend missed an elective CS because I visited her with DS who had the tiniest hint of an emerging sniffle - turned rapidly into 'flu , which she caught 24 hours behind DS, had her CS delayed which caused further complications for her

Am I right in thinking you have secondary age children QE? Couldn't you wait until they're back from school and then go by yourself? Or send them?

I am sure that in the vast majority of cases, chicken pox is a minor childhood disease. And unless you or someone close to you has been affected by the (potential) effects you probably wouldn't know. If there was alot of publicity about it, the government would be under pressure to include a vaccine against CP in its general programme and that would not be a popular move considering the MMR farce and would be hard to justify on a cost basis.

Zog, yes I do have older kids too. Think I will send them to the shops rather than go myself tbh as ds3 is also autistic so can be quite difficult to handle at times.

Oh, have just remembered dd has an after school club and also an evening club tonight, so that rules her out. dh is around for an hour this evening (during which time I will be preparing and serving dinner) then he is out at a meeting, then working again.

QE - Mammaloco is correct, cp when pregnant can cause deformities or death in a newborn. Why do we not know about this? I suppose because for "most" it is a mild disease. The same as probably we used to think about measles. I had measles as a child with no complications, but remember a neighbour's 18 year old son who'd suffered brain damaged from it.

What do we do with our own son? No, we dont wrap him in cotton wool. Yes, he is more likely than most to catch any disease, cold, cough, etc. The reason chickenpox is considered (and can be) such a threat is I presume because of the serious complications, such as pneumonia and encephalitis. The advice that even if our son was in an assembly, say, and there was a child with cp, that he should have the anti-viral came from his consultant at Great Ormond Street ...

Hopefully this thread has at least made people think twice about the consequences of cp for some. Just as you thought some of the posts were aggressive in tone; I thought the post "please be so kind not to take ds to Tesco's" crass. It's not a joke to some of us.

What if you have no choice but to take them out ????

Ds has yet to have chicken pox but when he gets them he will still have to go on the school run with me and in the shops. I have no one else to have him so what would I be expected to do, keep my other 2 off school aswell ??

I know of 2 people who died due to complications with chicken pox. One an adult, one a 4 year old child. It can lead to pneoumonia if it gets into the lungs, with resulting complications.